How much space does one family need?

I'm pretty sure that the family of Mukesh Ambani will never complain that they "need more space", since their new house has been built in Mumbai.
The house has 27 stories, a height of 173 metres and about 37.000 square metres of floor space. Among others, it contains a car park for 160 vehicles, a cinema with 50 places, a ballroom, at least one swimming pool, several helicopter landing pads, a health club, a dance studio... and many more rooms.

But size isn't everything: it also hosts a staff of 600, that keep everything running smoothly around there. And that's all for a family of five...

In many ways, this entire project is insane and slightly off-putting. But at the other hand: it's not just a showy building but also a load of jobs. And since it's so clearly present in the city of Mumbai (unlike the multi-million dollar mansions of Bill Gates and the likes), it might even draw a bit more attention to architecture and design in this city. Even if you think the project is ludicrous. Even if you think it's shameless to flaunt your wealth so publicly in a city with so many poor people. Even if you think the design by the Chicago-based architects Perkins and Will is unelegant.

Similarly: it might be stupidly oversized, but the prize isn't that shocking: apparently, the house costed about 44 million pounds in construction (about 55 million euros) to build, according to the Guardian. And that's a lot, but at the same time it's not THAT much. What could you buy in your city for that price? Likely not nearly as much, probably partially due to cheap labor in India, of course.
Luckily (for mr. Ambani, at least), the house is worth much more now. Apparently, due to land and property prices in downtown Mumbai, it's worth an estimated 750 million euros (!)

Prinzessinnengarten

Urban agriculture can mean a lot for a city population. Not only can it provide local food, but it can also create a social landscape in a city.

And Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin does exactly that. Since 2009, a collective called "Nomadic Green" rents a 6000 sqm plot at the Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg. The site has been a wasteland for about 50 years, but with relatively small means it has been transformed in an idyllic urban garden. Not only do locals maintain the garden themselves - thus creating a stronger sense of community in a relatively socially weak area of the city - but it also produces local (healthy and organic) food. Even more so: at Prinzessinnengarten, they strive towards a larger biodiversity. They try to cultivate rare species of plants.



Since the site is only rented, it cannot be a permanent garden. So most of the vegetables are planted in old crates from bakeries, or in large bags. In case the rent is ended (for whatever reason), most of the Prinzessinnengarten could be easily transported to another site. Other than that, by doing so, one doesn't depend on the local soil, since it might not be in the best condition after being wasteland for such a long period of time.



But besides the plants, the food and the greens, the community aspect of the project is quite important. It gives the locals a place to work on food production together, it is a place to educate kids about food, a place to eat together, a place to hang out in a green spot amidst all the concrete and a place that ties extremely different people together. And the idea seems so simple (albeit difficult to actually do, I assume).

Prinzessinnengarten is launched as a pilot project by Nomadic Green, so let's hope that there are many more projects to follow. By them, but also by people that are inspired by their acts.

Infinity is way up there...

If there's something like the ultimate infinity pool, I'm pretty sure it's located at the Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore. The hotel in itself is already quite bizarre: it's the most expensive hotel in the world at about 5,2 billion pounds (which is about double of the former record-breaking hotel, the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi).



The Marina Bay Sands has 2,560 rooms, costing from $500 a night upwards. That's quite impressive. Then, it has a casino, a museum, a theatre, a convention centre and indoor canals. Even more so impressive.
But the most impressive part of the hotel is, in my eyes, the so-called skypool, spanning the top of the three towers of the hotel, at the 55th floor. The pool itself is about three times as long as an olympic size pool, and seems to end in the air. That's because the water flows over the edge into a catchment, situated a bit lower. It's pretty spectacular to be able to swim on the 55th floor, with the skyline of Singapore in the back, and not to have a (visible) edge between you and the surrounding.

The complex is designed by Moshe Safdie, and I found it via the Daily Mail website.

Solids

The question of flexible spaces has always been a difficult one. Mainly, flexibility was defined by constraints. An architect, developer, city planner of someone else defined either a function, the size or the partitioning.
There have been quite some developments around the theme of flexibility, but none of them have been as radical as the concept of solids in Amsterdam.

Solids are about complete freedom, and complete flexibility. Tennants are free to decide the amount of square meters they want to rent - with a minimum of 90 m2. So far, nothing radical. However, tennants can also freely decide what they want to do with those square metres. If they'd like to use it to live in, it's just as good an option to start an office in the building. Pretty much everything goes, as long it doesn't cause disturbance for the neighbors (be it noise, pollution or whatnot).

That's what makes the concept of Solids so interesting: the building gives way to a mixture of functions, even if it isn't completely planned in advance. The buildings live, change and are adaptable to whatever the users would like. This also means that the spaces are completely empty and free of any interior obstacles. There's a front door, a wall and a facade and electrics, gas and water. All the interior walls, bathrooms, and furnishing can be decided by the tennant, and changed at will.
This way, the chance that the building becomes obsolete within some years of construction is pretty small. If there's a bigger market for dwellings, more of the casco spaces will be used as appartments.

A lot can be said about the currently planned Solids - about their facades, about their location in the city and what that means for the possible programming, the connection with the urban tissue, etcetera: but that's not quite the most fascinating part of this concept. The thing is: the appearance of the facade is literally only skin-deep. What makes the concept fascinating is it's flexibility in all senses. Even the rental price is to be decided by the tennants (within some reasonable ranges, of course)!

The concept of Solids is developed by Stadsgenoot, by the way.

A slightly different view

Honestly, I don't know that much about Mexico City. I know it's large, it's crowded and it has issues with smog and pollution. That's about it. Looking at pictures gives some kind of impression, but mostly a very incomplete (and potentially enscanated) one.

That's what I like about the photographs by the helicopter pilot Oscar Ruiz. Granted, not every picture has a strong composition, but the images can give you a different feel for the city.
They just give you just that little bit of extra perspective of the life in Mexico City. Like the image above. It does look a bit like a rendering, but it's an actual picture of a part of the low income housing complex in Ixtapaluca, which has a whopping total of more than 10,000 houses.
Or the image below, showing Cerro Chiquihuite, where a wall was built halfway up the hill in order to stop people from continuing to build uphill.
Or, all the way at the bottom, the market at Barrio Tepito. The area is allegedly very criminal and (therefore) dangerous, but the market should be awesome.

All in all, sometimes having a little bit of an overview can give you a better sight of the city than eye-level images.

Sermon on the train

Question: how 'public' is public, actually? Especially, how 'public' are 'public lectures'?

Many universities go out of their way to organize lectures that are accessible to anyone who's interested. This means, however, only that an institute choses to liberate only a small part of the information available, at a carefully picked place and time. Generally, the effect is that only visitors from a small circle will attend, not the general public. Most of the time, this isn't out of a lack of interest. It could be that the institute is, despite the open entrance, not easily accessible. Or that people outside the confined universe of the institute don't know when or where the public lecture is. Or think about the psychological barrier someone who's not accustomed to a university might have.
All in all, it's pretty safe to argue that, however good the intentions might be, public lectures are, in fact, not completely public.

The logical next question could be to think about how to increase the public character of those lectures. Think about the biblical public sermons, for instance. Jesus preached on the mount and on the plain, he went towards the public to share his view. If that idea is converted to our times, "Sermon on the Train" isn't that far-fetched.

Here, well known academics, as well as artists, go out into the public realm to share their ideas. Or, more precisely, they hold a lecture on a train in South-Africa. The lecture is announced beforehand by means of posters and such, meaning that people who want to hear the lecture mingle with the normal traveling public.
The difference is that the commuting public didn't choose to listen to the lecture, they are immersed into it, simply because they cannot get out of the train. In that essence, it's a bit like preaching in public - hence the term "sermon". One could ask whether this is more public as the traditional form, what the relation between lecturer and audience is, and who can access (or owns?) the information.


The idea behind the sermons stems from the artists "Made You Look". That means Nare Mokgotho and Molemo Moiloa.
"The works of Made You look are, as the name suggests, tongue-in-cheek interventions that encourage a re-observation of and de-familiarization with the ordinary." as they say themselves.

The blue city

"Jodhpur is the second largest city in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It was formerly the seat of a princely state of the same name, it was the capital of the kingdom known as Marwar. Jodhpur is a popular tourist destination, featuring many palaces, forts and temples, set in the stark landscape of the Thar desert."
At least, that's what wikipedia says.

But there's one thing that's remarkable enough in itself to draw huge crowds into town: large parts of the buildings around Mehrangarh Fort in the city are coloured in a bright blue. The city makes for quite an intriguing view, with the indigo colouration of the buildings in the desertous landscape.

At this point, you might be pondering "why on earth did they colour the place blue"? And surely, you are not alone in this. There's no conchise reason that is clearly stated, but there are plenty of theories, some of which are more believeable than others.
1) It is claimed to have started with blue as a symbol of a Brahmin living in that particular house. (makes me wonder: how many Brahmins could one city possible entail?)
2) It is claimed that blue works charms against mosquitos and other buggering bugs.
3) It is claimed that blue absorbs rather little of the heat of the sun.

I don't know which of this is true, and to be honest, I don't really mind too much. The thing is, it just looks spectacular, a blue city within the earth-coloured surroundings...



In case you want to see more images, the Boston Globe has a nice feature on Jodhpur.

Inside / Outside

What if an outside wall of a house would be more than a stringent division between inside and outside? What if a house would be able to intermingle the inside and the outside?

Well, that's exactly what Sou Fujimoto achieved in their House N in Oita (Japan). In this project, parts of the outside are integrated in the building, creating a weird mix-up that's neither inside or outside. Or both, at the same time.

The basic idea behind this is the concept of stepped privacy, by nesting three cubic volumes in eachother. This makes the space of the building a continuous whole with different parts.

It might even be a bit like a traditional Japanese house. These normally consist of a ornamental garden, a transitional area and the living area. The last one is always the really private space with a exeptional position in the whole.
However, the way the walls are punctured has nothing to do with traditional Japanese houses - where the walls are mainly layers of translucent sliding doors on top of eachother. The wall openings of the House N are more like traditional western windows - whether or not the frames are filled with glass. The only way these resemble the traditional Japanese wall is by means of the roller blind, that can close the window opening to vary the privacy of the spaces of the house.

Photo-real graffiti

Most people associate graffiti to some kind of simply scratched tags, that you can find on pretty much every street corner anywhere in the world. But there's so much more to graffiti, also some things that are really taking things to a whole new level. In some instances, it's pretty much impossible to imagine such a piece being made with spraycans and flatcaps.
Take, for instance, a look at the work of the German artist Tasso, who does some amazing illusions within graffiti.



Or what about Maclaim? Another artist with a completely unique style of photorealistic graffiti. It's not just "scribbling on a wall", but I think it's safe to say that this is pure art. Made by people who definitely think outside the box.

A roof with a view

There are so many flat roofs everywhere, that aren't in use as roof-terraces. Whether it's because of regulations, or because of the costs attached to it, or whatever reason one could think of, many flat roofs just lie there without being in use for anything else than sheltering the people living under it.

There must be other ways, is what the architects of Kalhöfer-Korschildgen must have thought. So they came up with a mobile roof terrace. It is a bit like those mobile picnic tables that you can fold into a suitcase an carry with you. I this case, you can fold out a roof terrace from the inside out.
If the weather is right, you can open up the skylight in your house and unfold the roof terrace package out of it, and everything is there: chairs, table, tablecloth, plates, glasses and cutlery. A brilliant solution for roofs without permanent terraces.

How to expand a historical city?

Many cities throughout the world are looking for a viable strategy for growth. In many cases, the answer to "growth" is seen in "expansion": increasingly adding suburban areas to an already sprawling city. The looming problems are ominous: an increase in congestion of traffic, an increase of pollution, a longer distance (both absolute and relative) to a city's vital cultural and recreational functions, risks of segregation and gentrification... the list of potential woes of increased suburbanisation of cities goes on and on.

The solution is obvious: if one is able to increase the density of existing historical city centres, without losing life-quality in those inner-city cores, growth is contained within it's own structure. Thus allowing for a compact city, with smaller distances to travel, proximity to all the lures of the centre, and a more lively centre at that.
Strangely enough, in many cities the exact opposite effect can be seen. For instance, take a look at Rome: in 1951, about 357.000 inhabitants were living in the historical centre of this city. Nowadays, their numbers have dropped to about 100.000.
So whereas it might seem logical to densify (and intensify) the historical city in order to allow the city to grow, there is a big drop in number of inhabitants.

This was the point for the Italian architecture firm IaN+ to start their research project. A case study of the historical centre of Rome serves as an example of a wider phenomenon, which they called the "Re-living the Historic Center".

Their analysis of the reasons for the decrease of inhabitants in the centre is threefold:
1. The financial profit:
downtowns are exclusively transformed according to economic “needs”, seeking mainly the increase of property value; the residential emptying produces the disappearing of the neighborhood structures and dynamics that have always characterized the city's life and complexity.
2. Tourism:
the invasion by the “tourism machine” causes the replacement of residential use with accommodation facilities and the resulting eviction of residents. In various areas of the historic center the daily number of tourists is at least twice the number of inhabitants in the same areas. The tourist-oriented structures are becoming the prevalent program; the downtown commercial fabric, constituted by small businesses, is disappearing, to be replaced by large shopping malls in the outskirts of the city.
3. University:
in Rome there are three large public universities, and the same amount of private universities plus a series of specialized institutes. Since there is not a proper typological response to the student population, students are forced to look into the normal residential market, so that they often replace most of the residents who used to live around university campuses.

These three effects create urban tissues with holes in it. Not physical holes, but holes of practical use. The streets and the facades are important for mass tourism, some building blocks have strong economic value. But for many buildings, only the facade (the way they present themselves to the public) matters: the inside of the building has become out-of-use.

The solution they propose is as simple as it is radical: demolish the under-used buildings in the historical centre. But leave the facade, since this is an important part of the decor for the huge tourist-industry of the city. Behind this empty facade, the social structure of the neighborhoods can be strengthened, by inserting housing facilities in this recycled city structure.
Behind the facades, structures of housing and open space can co-exist, in order to create a second type of structure of the city: next to the tourist economy of the city, a system of inhabitants and ecology.


It might be a bit naive, it might be a bit too simplistic, and their architectual solution might not be the most convincing one: The idea of this project certainly has some fascinating points to it.
A fact is that an increasing number of historical city centres are falling prey to mass tourism. A fact is that there are less and less inhabitants in these historical centres. And a fact is that one needs to devote though to the reclaiming of the city centres to actual city life, and consider alternatives for the continuing de-densification of those centres.

A house in the garden

Green facades are by no means a new feature in architecture. Over the last couple of years, they have been popping up everywhere, largely due to the highly influential projects of Patrick Blanc. And even though the most remarkable feature of this private laboratory in Paris is, in fact, a green facade. But R&Sie(n) took a slightly different approach with their greenery.

Normally, the "green" of a green facade is attached directly to the facade itself. In this case, the architects put a facade of 1200 ferns on the outside of the building, with some space in between. This has some advantages as far as the growth of plants goes, I presume, but the main advantage is architectural. The facade material (the ferns, in this case) can be placed in front of windows, thus completely camouflaging the building behind the plants. Because of the space between the window and the green facade, there is also a pleasant effect from the interior.



To get the (diffuse) light into the laboratory, a cunning system of blown glass beakers is used. By strategically placing these in between the ferns, light can be reflected to intrude into the building. That's not the only purpose of the beakers, however: rain water is collected in them, and they are used to grow the ferns soil-less. And the combination of these hand-crafted pieces of grass with the lucious green ferns works like a charm: both from the exterior as for the interior. Inside the laboratory, you don't have the experience of being enclosed in a Parisian court, but it gives you the experience of being enclosed in your private little hideway in nature. And the neighbors don't look upon yet another extension of the existing building block, but they see a lovely (albeit slightly wild) green garden. That's a win-win situation, isn't it?



I found this project on arch daily.

Sustainable Cities

There is already a lot being said about sustainability. The thing for designers is that sustainability touches every single aspect of their design. It's not just clean energy, or eco-friendly materials, or ways of dealing with waste - but it's all that, plus several other issues. And if a designer is trying to put sustainable thought into action in his design, it's important to keep an overview of all the issues at stake.

the Danish website sustainablecities.dk is thus a very noble initiative in my eyes: it's a platform for all kinds of sustainable issues in thinking about cities and making cities. It displays cases and topics of all sorts, lists experts, gives way to various discussions. The content of the website is clearly in a development phase, but the initiative is clearly worth everbody's attention - if you are even remotely concerned with sustainability issues, that is.

Mount Fear

For her sculpture series called Mount Fear, Abigail Reynolds used data about actual crimes she obtained by the police. These figures have been transformed into a dataset juxtaposed on a map, to indicate the occurence of a certain crime. Said in simple terms: on a map of a certain place, every criminal incident adds a little height to the model, thus creating an actual 3D landscape by representing the frequency and location of crimes in urban surroundings.

The imaginative landscape at the same time denies the actual instance that shaped it - like in the image above: Violent Crimes in East-London in 2002/2003 - by creating a fascinating landscape in which one can get lost, and also speaks of the actual life on the streets underlaying the projected landscape.

Barclaycard Waterslide (BBH London)

As a child, it was one of my dreams to be able to travel around in giant waterslides. Let me rephrase that: it still is one of my dreams to travel around in giant waterslides.

So the latest advertisment for Barclaycard really hit a spot with me - they really show what, in my eyes is the fun of going home from work by means of a waterslide. I especially like the bit where the guy in the ad travels through the library, it's very funny without being too overtly "funny"...

Personally, this advertisement really fused my water-slide-travelator-dreams again...

Border control

Sometimes, an image doesn't need that many words. I could write loads of different articles about this picture, but I think the sheer image of the American-Mexican border in the Tijuana-San Diego Metropolitan Area suffices to explain a thing or two about the local conditions...

P.S.: If it isn't clear: left is the USA, right is Mexico...
P.P.S.: I found this image via deputy dog, and the source is wikipedia.

Carloft

Let's imagine that you really want to live dead centre in a metropolitan area. But you don't want to experience all the possible negative side effects of living in such a place. And you have a lot of money. These three elements are crucial assumptions to understand the concept of the Carloft.

Apparently, living in a closed cocoon yourself, in some sort of gated community for wealthy urbanites isn't enough. Let's imagine: it could be hard to find a decent parking space. It might be slightly uneasy in a dark, underground parking space. So the people behind the carloft thought it must be a good idea to include the car as a part of your private luxourious condominium with a splendid view over the city centre.
So the appartments built with the carloft-system come with a built-in carlift, with which you can park your car right in front of your home, in front of your own window. Even if you live on the fifth floor in the centre of Berlin.

Honestly, I like luxus in appartments. I like stupid gadgets. And the private loft-gardens that every floor has in this building is just a lovely contrast to the city around the building. But this is overshadowed by a way to park your car that is just over the top in all possible ways. It's a way for inhabitants to close themselves off even more radical from everything around them that is slightly different (and thus: a potential threat to peace and security). Sure, it looks good in a photoshopped image, but the concept is just a bridge too far for me. If you'd want to live in the city, you'd have to deal with the fact that it's actually a city. And parking your car on the fifth floor might be a nice gadget, but for the god's sake: aren't there smarter (and less flashy, maybe?) ways to organize parking for an appartment building in an urban settings?

Writing on the wall revisited

So, yeah, I've written about this subject before, in a post called "writing on the wall". But recently, I've came across some texts scattered across walls, that are just to brilliant to pass up.



The top image was found on Eyeteeth, the bottom one on Hardcopy.

An alien intervention

At a first glance, it looks as though a giant sculpture by Richard Serra accidentally landed on this square in Schaarbeek, near Brussels. Closer inspection learns that it is in fact a building. Even more so: it is building with rental appartments.
The architect Mario Garzaniti used this oddly wedge-shaped site (with a footprint of about 50 square metres) to redefine the corner between the Koninginnelaan and the Liedtsplein.
In contrast with all the dynamic morphological limits of the surrounding buildings, this social housing block looks rather monolithic. The cladding plays an important role in this aspect: the corten steel is used as facade, wall covering and roof, as well as part of replacable shutters for the windows.

The thing is: the building looks really great. But that's probably the architect in me talking. I appreciate the fact that Mario Garzaniti didn't make any compromises, I appreciate the detailling, I appreciate the look of the weathered corten-steel...
But I just cannot imagine that the building is really appreciated by the target audience for this social housing. Or am I condensending about this? I cannot make up my mind about this building - I'm in doubt between the beautiful architecture and the contextual response to its surroundings...

If you want to read or see more about this project, you might check out this article on A+ (in Dutch), or this thread at pushpullbar (in English).

Fantasy architecture league

New York Magazine has remodeled itself into the client that most architects dream of: the one that doesn't pose any restrictions, but gives the designer freedom to do whatever they'd like to.

Well, that's almost true: they invited four architects to make plans for an empty lot in downtown New York. The rules were simple, and I quote "We required only that the result include a residential component and that it more or less meet zoning requirements."

It's nice to see the different approaches the invited architects took. Flank, for instance, came up with a concept to make affordable, middle class housing in this area - a type of dwellings that is not that well represented in the urban tissue of the area. Flank came up with a design, in which a corporate logo is integrated into the facade of the building. But it's not just a building with a billboard on the side of it - the billboard is fragmented to ensure that it's highly visible from a little distance, without interfering with the quality of the appartment as such.

But, if I were to decide which design should be built (if any of it would actually be built in the future), I'd definitely go with the proposal of Work AC, called The Locavore Fantasia. They went for a snazzy appartment building, with anurban farm on top. The whole is stretched to get a potential for maximizing farmland in the city - creating shorter lines of transportation, closer contact with nature, and all the other advantages of urban agriculture. The building is devised to have different crops on each floor. It might not only be urban agriculture, the building would also have potential for more recreational used green sites, such as golf courses, for instance. Also, art in the public realm is included in the proposal: the columns supporting the building (and leaning it to face towards the sun) are commisioned by artists. In the rather cute, Sim City-styled presentation drawing, they used a Brancusi to support the entire building...