Design for despots

Tour a few of the most ambitious and audacious designs breaking ground in some of the world’s least free countries. (Update: ‘least free’ according to Foreign Policy)

Related: in The Sunday Magazine of the NYT Darcy Frey reports on the Netherlands’ craziest architects office, MVRDV of Rotterdam, and its co-founder Winy Maas. One of the ideas they are pursuing is “vertical gardening”.

Weekend Reading

The Contextualizer: Arthur Lubow portrays Prizker prizewinner Jean Nouvel.

Into the Eisenshpritz. Elif Batuman looks at the latest publications in the world of the graphic novel and explains the attractions of the super heroes and their younger siblings. It’s their double character we find so fascinating.

About graveyards and memorials

Death is a solemn affair, of course, but more often than not, the banality of its architecture only compounds the grief. Steve Rose reports on moves to shake up the architecture of death.

The internet is filled with corpses. There are numerous online memorials, from eGraves to do-it-yourself concepts like My Last Email (via). And haven’t you noticed that the internet is slowly and inexorably becoming a vast digital mausoleum ? Sites like YouTube and Flickr are vast virtual burial chambers. See e.g. here and here and here and here.

Related, physical responses to the need for enduring memorials: the impressive Igualada Cemetery, near Barcelona, the well-know Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. See also the Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe (yes, everyone wants an association).

Also related, internet history links and the Internet Archive.

A requiem to end this post.

Construisons Demain

Construisons demain (French link) premiered at Batimat in Paris earlier this month. This House of the Future, built of wood and covering nearly 200 sq. m., is a project by Eric Wuilmot, one of the architects of “Maison A” (French link) assisted by Domoconsulting for the home automation design.The system showcases low-energy living with three prefabricated wooden modules, resource and energy efficient systems, healthy finish materials, and inviting living spaces. The house was constructed by Construction Millet Bois. The house is not a finished product as such, but more a concept to show what the possibilities are to construct an ecological house that is close to being a passive house (which I find a very interesting idea).

Basilica Palladiana

Tomorrow I’m visiting the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza (Italy). It was designed by Palladio. Pity I forgot my camera, but you can see some pictures here (Google image search). And now a latte macchiato (recipe).

10 Buildings I Want To See

Following my post yesterday about the Hagia Sophia, I compiled a list of 10 buildings I would like to see IRL. Probably you know them all, but as me from books (eh.. or the internet). Limiting this list to 10 buildings is also making me exclude dozens of other buildings that one should see, but I have other things I want to do as well besides visiting this list.

1. The Hagia Sophia of course.
2. Angkor Wat, a temple at Angkor, Cambodia
3. The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia
4. Chichen Itza, a pre-Columbian archaeological site built by the Maya civilization located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula, present-day Mexico.
5. Petra, an archaeological site in Jordan
6. Machu Picchu, a pre-Columbian Inca city located at 2,430 m altitude on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru
7. The Forbidden City, the Chinese imperial palace from the mid-Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, and located in the middle of Beijing, China
8. The 12 monolithic churches at Lalibela, a town in northern Ethiopia
9. The Alhambra, located in Granada, Spain, considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Muslim architecture. It was designed as a palace and fortress for the Moorish monarchs of Granada.
10. The Taj Mahal, a mausoleum located in Agra, India.

Hagia Sophia

This I need to see: the Hagia Sophia. But before I go I need to do some study work again : Byzantine history, culture and architecture, the Ottoman Empire, Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, and, and. An amazing crossroad of history and culture. And why not move over there ?

Oculus

Oculus (pl. oculi) is the Latin word for eye, and is used most commonly as the name of the round opening in the top of the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, Italy, and less often in reference to other round windows. The oculus which lets in a round shaft of light that at different times of year illuminates different niches and was meant to function originally in at least two distinct ways. First, it acted as a spotlight which over the course of the year gave fair and measured visibility to the various deities, foreign and native, whose statues inhabited the niches around the dome’s interior. Second, the oculus also served as a calendar marking time, uniting the Roman world under the aegis of the only absolutely equitable system of measurement they knew, the clock of heaven itself.