:

DE sign:
(Deconstructing in-order to find new meanings)

A blogging space about my personal interests; was made during training in Stockholm #Young Leaders Visitors Program #Ylvp08 it developed into a social bookmarking blog.

I studied #Architecture; interested in #Design #Art #Education #Urban Design #Digital-media #social-media #Inhabited-Environments #Contemporary-Cultures #experimentation #networking #sustainability & more =)


Please Enjoy, feedback recommended.

p.s. sharing is usually out of interest not Blind praise.
This is neither sacred nor political.

Friday, March 27

'killing machines'

Architects are creating toxic 'killing machines'

Sustainability expert William McDonough warns of over-focusing on carbon neutrality

Architects are creating “killing machines” by not considering the toxicity of the materials used in buildings, America’s leading sustainability expert William McDonough said this week.

Speaking to BD on Tuesday at the ParkCity conference in London, organised by Cabe and Natural England, architect and author McDonough said the emphasis on reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions was skewing the sustainable agenda.

“I’m amazed there’s so much focus on carbon, yet [architects are still] using toxic materials,” he said. “It’s a nightmare — you’re effectively delivering a killing machine. We have to put as much focus on materials as on energy.”

His practice, William McDonough & Partners, has worked on UK projects including the unbuilt National Science Museum in Swindon, and a conceptual design for a new town in Rugby.

And he featured in Vanity Fair’s 2008 power-ranking top 100, alongside figures such as Vladimir Putin and Rupert Murdoch.

His comments were hailed by some British experts but greeted with caution by the UK Green Building Council.

Michael Pawlyn, who worked on the Eden Project while at Grimshaw and is now principal at Exploration Architecture, said: “There is a danger we could get too carbon-focused. We need to move to a closed-loop model, and that’s not necessarily the lowest carbon model. It’s a daunting challenge, it sounds major alarm bells with the coatings industry — paint and PVC are almost inevitably going to end up as pollution.”

Technical director of BRE Global Alan Yates agreed. “Carbon neutrality has come to the fore because of government initiatives and protocols from the EU,” he said. “You need to take account of the other issues, and toxicity should be an integral part of that.”

David Strong, chief executive of sustainability consultancy Inbuilt and the former managing director of BRE Environment, said the comments echoed what he had been saying for a decade.

“It’s great someone as high profile as Bill McDonough has raised this issue, but this is about more than about just carbon and materials,” he said. “Buildings can be zero-carbon but fraught with other problems. It’s the law of unintended consequences — if the air quality in a school is so bad, because it’s so airtight, that all the kids are falling asleep, that’s not a sustainable outcome.”

But the UK Green Building Council warned the importance of cutting carbon could not be underestimated.

A spokesman said: “Climate change is the priority. We should be very wary of taking our eye off the zero-carbon ball — it’s a global climate emergency.”

The UKGBC has also dismissed calls by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors last week for the government to revise its target to make all new homes zero-carbon by 2016.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3137110&c=2

Greening towns and cities needs to be part of the Green New Deal, as much as technology

A major shift of public money towards the greening of towns and cities is needed, to tackle both climate change and the recession and create places we all want to live in.

With the next budget fast approaching, CABE and Natural England are calling on the government to prioritise funding for green assets such as parks, trees and open spaces.

The two government advisors on urban design and the natural environment are organising a conference this week which will start a debate about how we can create more liveable places.

They argue that since we are faced with two urgent and fundamental challenges – climate change and the recession – investment in grey and green infrastructure needs to be rebalanced.

The spend on grey schemes, like building and expanding roads, is out of kilter with spend on assets like street trees and parks and green spaces, and the public funding pot cannot be realistically expected to fully accommodate both.

Richard Simmons, CABE chief executive, points out that we have to redesign our towns and cities in response to the imperative of climate change. Design is the signal of intent - and the intention of urban design should be to reduce, absorb and capture more carbon dioxide.

“Greening towns and cities needs to be part of the Green New Deal, as much as technology” he says.

http://www.cabe.org.uk/news/green-cities-and-tackle-recession

Thursday, March 26

SuiteNY

SUITE NY is carring these awesomely sleek Zeitraum beds, made from eco-friendly materials. The fact that they look like they are floating is pretty awesome, too.

GWIIN

Global Women Inventors & Innovators Network (GWIIN)
a subsidiary of the Professional Family Woman's Network Ltd based in the United Kingdom, is a global network which aims to increase the number of innovative women embracing enterprise. We work with Government departments, leading industry experts, voluntary organisations, enterprises and educational institutions.
The goal is simply to find effective ways of bringing support, assistance, tools, advice and information to assist women in achieving significant growth in their businesses. 

Friday, March 20

2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom

Teachers and students know what makes a classroom work. We're inviting you to design the classroom of the future together.

According to the World Bank, educating all children worldwide will require the construction of 10 million new classrooms in more than 100 countries by 2015. At the same time, millions of existing classrooms are in serious need of repair and refurbishment.

Let's get started.

We are inviting you, teachers, students, architects and designers, to work together to design the classroom of the future for a school of your choosing. Your design should address the unique challenges your school faces in trying to provide smart, safe and sustainable learning spaces. Students and teachers, here's your chance to tell the world what you need to make your classroom more effective. Architects and designers, you'll work one-on-one with students to translate those needs into better classroom design.

  • Share your design expertise and inspire school students to re-imagine their classroom
  • Help students learn about the built environment using a companion design curriculum
  • Become an advocate for better classroom design in your community

Jurors currently includes Dave Eggers, Michelle Kaufmann, Hilary Cottam, Kigge Hvid and others. More will be added over the course of the registration period.

If your design wins, your school will receive up to $50,000 in funding for classroom construction and upgrading. You will receive a grant of $5,000 to help them do it.

http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/competitions/challenge/2009

Re:Vision DALLAS

Re:Vision is a revolutionary initiative to create the prototype for an innovative, sustainable urban community. At the heart of the process is a series of contests generating visionary ideas for what can and should be in the design about urban space.

The City of Dallas and Urban Re:Vision present Re:Vision DALLAS in partnership with Central Dallas CDC and BC Workshop.

What if everything we knew and believed about design needed to change? What if we need to change along with it?

It’s a provocative idea, but one Re:Vision has been delving into for the past two years. Our series of competitions have searched for ideas and plans that can redefine urban space in a restorative way. We have focused on the city block because it is a microcosm of systems and relationships, and requires an integration and imagination that transcends beyond a single building.

The challenges—and opportunities—on this scale are incredible. And we’re looking for visionary thinking to take them on.

Re:Vision Dallas is a chance to propel design beyond the typical, beyond the norm and to lay the foundation for a future of sustainable development we all hope is inevitable. It’s a chance to create a block that does no harm, to people or place. A chance to encourage and value relationships, while fostering respect for nature and our neighbors, privacy and resources, economy and consumption. It’s a chance to change how we live and connect, how we interact and collaborate—how we live in a space throughout our life and the lifecycle of the space.

http://www.urbanrevision.com/competitions/revision-dallas

Friday, March 13

Prove A Point

The Omrania l CSBE Student Award for Excellence in Architectural Design . Prove A Point
After having had a successful launch in 2008, Omrania and Associates (O&A) and the Center for the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE) have expanded the Student Award for Excellence in Architectural Design beyond the boundaries of Jordan by widening eligibility to include students from all Arab countries. The award, which is given to the most outstanding submitted architectural graduation projects, aims at recognizing quality in the teaching of architecture in the Arab world, and at encouraging students in Arab architectural schools to excel in their design performance.

The monetary value of the award’s prizes also have been increased and will consist of the following:

First Prize of 3500 USD

Second Prize of 2500 USD

Third Prize of 1500 USD

Eligibility

Eligibility for the award will be restricted to final-year students for a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture or Architectural Engineering at universities located in countries belonging to the Arab League. Applicants should have successfully completed and defended their final-year architectural design graduation project before the award’s submission deadline.

Additional Information

Details regarding submission format, submission dates, jury members, etc. will be published on this website in March 2009.

http://www.csbe.org/awards/omrania_csbe_2009award.html

Shatana International Artist Workshop 3

Shatana International Artist Workshop 3, Jordan 

is inviting applications for its 2-week workshop residency program in Shatana, Jordan from the 3rd until the 17th of July 2009. Shatana workshop is part of the Triangle Arts Network following the model of workshops organized by artists for artists.

 

Submissions Deadline: 30th of March, 2009

For more information:

http://www.makanhouse.net/shatana

DAMAS . a new brand 4 the old town

Presentation at Kozah Art Gallery

Friday, March 6

Hemeroscopium House



For the Greek,
Hemeroscopium is the place where the sun sets. An allusion to a place that exists only in our mind, in our senses, that is ever-changing and mutable, but is nonetheless real. It is delimited by the references of the horizon, by the physical limits, defined by light, and it happens in time.
 
Hemeroscopium house traps, a domestic space, and a distant horizon. And it does so playing a game with structures placed in an apparently unstable balance, that enclose the living spaces allowing the vision to escape. With heavy structures and big actions, disposed in a way to provoke gravity to move the space. And this way it defines the place.


The order in which these structures are piled up generates a helix that sets out from a stable support, the mother beam, and develops upwards in a sequence of elements that become lighter as the structure grows, closing on a point that culminates the system of equilibrium. Seven elements in total. The design of their joints respond to their constructive nature, to their forces; and their stresses express the structural condition they have. By the way this structure is set, the house becomes aerial, light, transparent, and the space kept inside flows with life. The apparent simplicity of the structure´s joints requires in fact the development of complex calculations, due to the reinforcement, and the prestress and post-tension of the steel rods that sew the web of the beams.

It took us a year to engineer but only seven days to build the structure, thanks to a total prefabrication of the different elements and a perfectly coordinated rhythm of assembly. All of our effort oriented to develop the technique that would allow to create a very specific space. And thus, a new astonishing language is invented, where form disappears giving way to the naked space. Hemeroscopium house materializes the peak of its equilibrium with what in Ensamble Studio we ironically call the “G point”, a twenty ton granite stone, expression of the force of gravity and a physical counterweight to the whole structure.



Antón García- Abril
  • *1969 in Madrid, Spain
  • European Doctor of Architecture. ETSA, Madrid 2007.
  • Master in Architecture, ETSA Madrid 1995.
  • Spanish Academy research scholarship in Rome 1996.
  • Establishes Ensamble Studio in 2000.
  • Professor at the E.T.S.A. Madrid, Architecture Projects.
  • Writes about architecture in EL CULTURAL.
  • Gives lessons and conferences at different forums and universities.
2008 Exhibition JAE (Young Spanish Architects). Arquería de los Nuevos Ministerios. Madrid. (Sede SGAE Noroeste en Santiago de Compostela). Exhibition “La natural seducción de la piedra – Contemporary Architecture in Spain. PIEDRA2008”. (Sede de la SGAE en Santiago de Compostela). Conference “recent work” Accademia d'Architettura of Mendrisio. Conference “Sfidando la gravità.” Facoltà di Architettura di Ferrara. Ferrara. Conference “Sfidando la gravità.” Museo di Castelvecchio. Verona. Conference “A young look to knowledge frontier. Subtractive architecture.” Menéndez Pelayo International University. Santander. Honor Guest – Conference “Tuned City - Between sound and space speculation. Antón García-Abril: building for sound”. Technische Universität. Berlin. Conference in Technische Universität Berlin. “Antón García- Abril: studio work. Positionen 08”. Conference “Matter in time", Academic Association of Lusíada University, Lisbon. Conference “New works”. Intention cultural program. Formatos library. A Coruña. Visiting professor in Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Architectural Digest Award. Best architect of the year 2008.
2007
Conference "Antón García-Abril. Recent work". Harvard University, Massachusettts. Visiting professor in University of Navarra, Spain. Lecturer at the "X Architecture Courses", C.M. Hernando Colón, Seville. Lecturer at Dallas Architecture Forum, Texas. 2006 Visiting professor in UTA - University of Texas at Dallas. 2000 First Prize. Biennial of Architecture 2000, Spanish Pavilion, Venice. 1997 Store – Exhibition HAZEN PIANOS project. Madrid. Built (1998).
Honorable mention. Madrid City Hall XIII Architecture and Town Planning Award. (Store – Exhibition HAZEN in Madrid).

Tuesday, March 3

Celebrating 90 Years of Bauhaus

THE LEGACY OF MODERNISM

Celebrating 90 Years of Bauhaus

By Ulrike Knöfel

The legendary Bauhaus movement turns 90 this year and the anniversary is being marked by exhibitions from Tokyo to New York. The school was founded by a young architect, Walter Gropius, who wanted to shape products for the future and create a more just society.

In times of gloom and doom, there is often a need for the charismatic energy of great ideas. Back in 1919 German architect Walter Gropius regarded the miserable period following the end of the World War I as a "catastrophe of world history." His response was a bold and yet surprisingly pragmatic utopian vision -- the Bauhaus. By establishing this new kind of art school he managed to create a cultural wonder that continues to have a profound impact to this day.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the school: A series of events and exhibitions are poised to remind us that, without Gropius, the world of architecture and design would look very different today.

Gropius, who was 35 at the time, was determined to turn his back on tradition and yet, in a thoroughly old-fashioned way, he also sought to assume social responsibility. On March 20, 1919, he submitted an application to establish an academy in the city of Weimar. The permit for the "National Bauhaus in Weimar" arrived on April 12. In the meantime, the architect had written a sweeping manifesto. It was to mark the beginning of a virtually worldwide aesthetic upheaval -- in short, a true revolution.

From the beginning the Bauhaus proved to be an exciting art school, an academy that was intent on being close to real life rather than a lofty academic institution. The board of trustees, which consisted of Gropius' circle of friends, soon included Albert Einstein, and amongst its instructors could be counted some of the leading painters of the age like Josef Albers, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Oskar Schlemmer. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was the third director of the Bauhaus, went on to become a legend in architectural history.

This year's 90th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus will be celebrated with exhibitions in Weimar and Berlin, Tokyo and New York, and in the publication of a record number of new books. Even New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has long planned to celebrate its 80th birthday with the Bauhaus's 90th. Alfred Barr, the first director of the MoMA, was so inspired by the Bauhaus that he made European modernist art the focus of his museum.

nd with good reason: After all, it was the school that shaped the image of the modern age. For the Bauhaus it was the artist's supreme duty to abandon old habits. "The first act of the Bauhaus was to tear down all established opinions … Suddenly people discovered that life could be viewed from an entirely different perspective," wrote Lisbeth Oestreicher, a Bauhaus graduate.

That modernist legacy is undeniable. To this day, the Bauhaus serves as a kind of benchmark for those who belong to the avant-garde in art, design, architecture and urban planning. Furthermore, it forms the basis for modern-day Germany's reputation and self-image as a place of artistic progress.

Laying Claim to Bauhaus Legacy

Over a 14 year period, Weimar, Dessau and Berlin were the three school's three bases. Then, in 1933 it was finally defeated by the opponents of modernist culture. Today, in an overdue homage to the Bauhaus, the sites in Weimar and Dessau are designated UNESCO World Cultural Heritage sites.

eachers and students who fled after 1933. An independent modernist Bauhaus movement developed in Israel. A New Bauhaus was opened in Chicago in the 1930s, and New York would be a different city today without the steel-and-glass aesthetic imported from Germany. Eventually, the purism of Bauhaus became too dogmatic for the playful postmodern movement of the 1980s, when architects sought to rebel against a legend that had become larger than life.

In postwar divided Germany, both the East and the West laid claim to the Bauhaus legacy. Later on there were critics who argued that the ugly apartment blocks and prefabricated buildings were a direct result of the Bauhaus vision of mass-production housing. But these attempts to demystify the Bauhaus never really succeeded.

In 2009, Bauhaus's anniversary, it feels like everyone is glorifying the Bauhaus, celebrating the school as a laboratory of seminal product design. It is being declared a big, fun-loving studio, which almost casually spat out one design innovation after the next, bringing aesthetics to ordinary life. But in reality it was far more complex, contradictory and, most of all, more momentous than its reputation.

The real feat achieved by Gropius and his cohorts was to have recognized and exposed the sociopolitical and moral power of architecture and design. They wanted to exert "effective influence" on "general conditions," fashion a more just world and turn all of this into a "vital concern of the entire people."

The notion of architecture as being political -- because it concretely designs living conditions and as such can cause controversy and opposition -- is a notion that goes right back to the Bauhaus.

Of course, this desire to make the world a better place is now often considered a flaw. But maybe it is time to go back to this original spirit. The successor institutions to the school -- the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau and the Bauhaus University of Weimar -- could be well placed to return to the Bauhaus revolutionary approach and spirit.

In Dessau, at least, the anniversary year is being used for a new beginning. Berlin architect Philipp Oswalt, who will assume the position of director in March, is calling for more commitment and for the school to become involved in society.

The Creation of an Elite

Back in 1919, hardly anyone could have predicted that the Bauhaus would become an object of eternal fascination. At the end of World War I, the German art world was frozen in a state of trauma. Those who had escaped the trenches alive were struggling to survive financially, and the future seemed politically charged and economically uncertain.

Then the Bauhaus arrived as a glimmer of hope. Gropius considered the prewar concept of the artist as a fun-loving bohemian to be naïve. He sought to establish a foundation that could support painters, designers and architects. In his vision, the trades were to be the basis of all artistic endeavors, and in the school he established workshops and called his professors masters and his students apprentices and journeymen.

His goal was to bring together intellect, talent and energy. All of the products that were created at the Bauhaus -- every chair, lamp, door handle or mural -- seems to contain this nucleus of confidence. The charisma that the Bauhaus continues to exert today stemmed both from this confidence and the fact that the school attracted highly ambitious and hopeful young people.

Most of Gropius's students were poor and hungry -- both literally and figuratively. They were hungry for life and knowledge, for aesthetic experiment and physical pleasure. They also lacked everything, from working materials to clothing to lodging. The school's canteen, opened in October 1919, developed into one of the most important places in the building and the academy planted its own vegetable gardens. Despite these modest circumstances, the students and teachers developed a tremendous self-confidence, a sense of being part of an elite group, or at least a group of people who were the exception to the rule.

"We all lived together like siblings," reported Bauhaus student Ré Soupault. Anyone who came to study at the school had already renounced their bourgeois background. Soupault, for example, accepted the need to part ways with her family as a necessary evil.

This didn't necessarily meet with favor among the local population. To the dismay of the citizens of Weimar, "Bauhaus people of both sexes" sunbathed outside in the nude, and their "licentious intercourse" had even produced children.

The Bauhaus became a community that provided completely new conventions for young people. The first few years were even quite esoteric, with the Swiss painter Johannes Itten acting as a kind of guru. A follower of Far Eastern teachings who kept his head shaved and wore monk-like clothing, Itten required his students to shed "all conventions."

At first Gropius had attempted to reinsert a soul into the industrialized era, with his belief in the importance of the trades and his preference for wood as a material which harked back to the builders' huts of the Middle Ages. However, the director quickly shed these initial notions and his idealization of the past. He still condemned pure art as an end unto itself, and he continued to refuse to produce "luxury items for connoisseurs." But he also began to vehemently propagate architecture and product design tailored to the possibilities of industry.

In 1923, he proclaimed the motto: "Art and Technology -- a New Unit." The master of the Bauhaus demanded speed, wanting to overcome "earthly sluggishness." He complained that some Bauhaus members preferred a "return to nature, preferring to shoot with a toy bow instead of a shotgun."

The old belief in the power of the machine from the prewar days had been reawakened. And it triggered a heated debate over what direction the Bauhaus should be going in. One of the skeptics was Bauhaus master Georg Muche, who refused to enter into a "compromising relationship" with the "world of form, devoid of meaning" in the outside world. Kandinsky, the Russian genius who had helped found abstract art, was also troubled by the fact that "the machine" had been elevated "to idolatry."

Form and function, production and marketing: everything was reinvented from the ground up. "New" was the buzzword of the hour: new building, new vision, the New Man.

The concept of "style" was also controversial within the institution, and yet it existed, of course, -- the unmistakable Bauhaus style. Freed of all flourishes, this minimalist vocabulary of form was an intelligent, democratic understatement. Since then, the mythology of modernism has included the flat roof, the functional logic of a chair and the matter-of-factness of a metal teapot.

Tension in Nationalist Weimar

Weimar's conservatives smelled subversion and communism. In an official declaration, they condemned the "experimenting within that one-sided, most modern of tastes" and the "political aftertaste of the most radical of movements." The Army of the German Reich was deployed to search Gropius' house, and the situation became increasingly tense. By March 1925 things came to a head and all Bauhaus masters were let go. It was clear that the city of Weimar, where the political environment had become more and more nationalist, conservative and reactionary, wanted nothing more to do with this Bauhaus clique.

The Bauhaus, however, was not going to be closed down so easily. The academy was reborn in the city of Dessau and this time it had its own modern school building with a student dormitory and villas for the masters, all designed by Gropius. Now the Bauhaus was a true university.

Finally the school -- and, most of all, Gropius -- could express itself architecturally in a significant way: The city commissioned the school to build an entire housing estate. The industrial city of Dessau appeared to be the perfect vessel for the high-speed energy of the Bauhaus.

But the group was still not completely unified. Ise Gropius, the director's wife, disapproved of the school's painters, whom she considered too other-worldly, and wrote in her diary: "People like Klee and Kandinsky are completely oblivious to the difficult situation; they do not read newspapers and they bury themselves in their studios."

The teachers certainly lived in style in the white master houses Gropius had designed, and yet it bothered Kandinsky that everyone could see into his house through its large windows. Oskar Schlemmer, the painter, had different concerns. He feared that the homeless would show up one day "while the artists are sunning themselves on the roofs of their villas."

When Gropius left the school in 1928 to pursue his architectural projects, there began a period of extensive politicization. The new director, Hannes Meyer, sympathized with the German Communist Party but was not a member. Many later observers came to regard him as having been too radical. In their view Meyer, an advocate of the "needs of the people," did not fit into the intellectual climate at the Bauhaus.

Persecution and Emigration

For Meyer, the "collective scarcity" that took hold shortly after the beginning of the world economic crisis was a personal challenge. At the same time, he had to recognize that the Bauhaus threatened to become pure fashion. "A Vienna fashion magazine recommends that lingerie no longer be designed with little flowers, but with geometric designs in the contemporary Bauhaus style," the editor of the school's magazine wrote derisively.

And yet it was under Meyer's aegis that probably the most trivial -- and most successful -- product was developed for the school's manufacturing company: the Bauhaus carpet, with subtle patterns of strips, grids and surfaces, all in different color variations.

There was little left of the original goals of creating a new aesthetic for a new, fairer world. Many of the objects designed at the Bauhaus were far too expensive for all but the upper middle class. It would have taken the desired mass production to make the designs affordable for everyone.

When Meyer was replaced by fellow architect Mies van der Rohe in 1930, the Bauhaus phenomenon was already on its way out. The new director was an aesthete, a master of elegance and perfection, but he was neither a political nor a social reformer. The school's days were numbered.

The Nazi Party had already gained strength in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where Dessau was located, and in August 1932 the city council decided to close down the school. Although it relocated to Berlin, a year later the Bauhaus was finished.

The identity of the Bauhaus was based on its nonconformity. However, at the very end, a few former teachers and students, sought to conform to the new Nazi regime, which was open to technical modernism. Many others, however, emigrated and thus saved the reputation of this unique institution.

Gropius, who became a professor in the United States, helped shape international architecture. In 1937, he wrote: "An entire group from the Bauhaus has now come together in this country. It gives you the feeling of having established roots, something that those of us who have been uprooted all need."

Of all the competing avant-gardes of the 1920s, in the end it was his Bauhaus that emerged victorious.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,610283,00.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,610283-2,00.html

FIAI 2009

FIAI 2009 International Achievement Awards

IFAI is now accepting entries for the 2009 International Achievement Awards competition. The competition is open to designers, manufacturers or subcontractors of specialty fabric end-products. Projects must fit into one of the 28 IAA categories, be an end-product manufactured with a specialty fabric, and must fulfill a client's specific need or provide a design solution. Winning projects will be announced at the IFAI Expo 2009 in San Diego. Deadline for project submission is June 15, 2009.