The non-profit organization of volunteers, Architecture for Humanity is teaming up with PechaKucha, an event for designers to show and discuss their work, to unite 277 cities around the world currently offering this event for one cause. Global PechaKucha Day for Haiti will broadcast a 24-hour wave of presentations on February 20th that will be dedicated to the rebuilding of Haiti.
The event will all be streamed online for everyone in the world to watch in real time and captured on the website and tagged with the idea that these ideas and people could be a great resource for future relief efforts as well as this one. This sounds like it’s going to be an incredible event. The video above features the offical announcement from PechaKucha night founders Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo and Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity. More information from the website:
Already presentations are being prepared – some are intended to offer hope and encouragement through stories of past disaster relief projects, while others offer simple inspiration by showing the power of great creative thinking. Some amazing people have stepped up to the challenge so prepared to be surprised
All of the 2,000 presentations generated from the one-day event – what could be the world’s biggest single day globally distributed conference – will be posted online at PechaKucha Presentation. All presentations will have a donate button to raise money.
All proceeds will go to Architecture for Humanity for rebuilding Haiti. AFH operates globally, and was instrumental in getting projects built after the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Katrina. The design costs for the new buildings in Haiti have been already covered so all donations will go to tangible built projects.
The beauty of the simple 20×20 format is the presentations are so easy to make and voice, so each month AFH will make updates in the 20×20 format which will be posted on line and shown at all the PechaKucha Night around the world in the coming month to show how the PechaKucha Fund is being used and to help keep the interest level high through until completion.
After a lovely stroll through the south park blocks in downtown Portland in the late fall, I decided to wander over to the Hotel Madera to snap some pictures of the lovely courtyard designed by local landscape architecture firm Lango Hansen in conjunction with Holst Architecture on the upgrade of the old Days Inn to the new boutique Hotel Modera. The location of the new courtyard replaces what used to be a lifeless parking lot.
From the sidewalk, the trellis structure indicates the entrance point into the courtyard, doubling as a subtle welcome sign. The connection between the courtyard and the streetscape works well in that the courtyard feels like it’s own space and yet is still open and inviting enough not to feel uninviting to those passing by.
A wooden screen between courtyard space and sidewalk creates a feel of enclosure while allowing for the best urban activity of all, people watching. This is especially interesting given the public bus stop right outside.
Once inside, the wood decking leads up to the hotel entrance while a low wall lines the walkway to the left surrounding an outdoor dining area while the open area off to the right is an open, public space. Moveable seating mixed with permanent seating walls invite people to sit down and relax awhile. As the furniture would indicate, the seating walls could either be used for sitting or as a table.
The public space is madeup of a grid that overlays both the horizontal and the vertical space with hardscape, furnishings and planting which create patterns that move in and out of the grid. Patches of vegetation reach out from the vertical wall into the horizontal hardscape with sharp, angular edges that give it a clean, modern feel that meshes with the identity of the hotel. This design is the part that is so intriguing about this space, instead of creating a gridded living wall that simply because of product or budget limitations, this particular living wall not only fits perfectly within the design but enhances the idea of the fluid grid.
One might say that the vegitated wall looks too regimented unlike the walls of Patrick Blanc which run seamlessly without lines. But here, such a seamless style would not make sense and instead the vegetated tiles work perfectly. They even seem to float, almost giving off the sense that the viewer could move them about as they wished by simply pushing them around.
Metal edging details the planting areas, separating them from the precast paving tiles. Some plants are clipped and manicured to remain within the square and rectangular spaces while others, like the soft grasses, are allowed to flop outside the lines.
A rough rock slab and gravel pathway move through lush, vegetated squares that bring the viewer close to the living wall amongst the ferns and grasses. Here one can touch and look closely at the vegetated tiles that make up the wall.
I believe the vegetated wall panels are the Green Wall Panels by G-Sky. These are pretty cool products that make it easy for even the vegetated architecture novice to achieve good results. The designer can select a palette of plants that fits in with their design, G-Sky will then plant the tiles for them. Pretty simple and easy. Here it looks like they are planted with a mix of dirt inside of fabric pouches and moss has filled in some gaps around some of the smaller plants. Drip irrigation is then added behind the system and here it is allowed to drip freely out the bottom and drain into the nearby planter bed.
This plaza has successfully managed to blend the feel of the richly vegetated Pacific Northwest with the clean lines of modern architecture while bringing in a cool element of new technology within landscape architecture. While this space was rather empty in these pictures, I’m certain that it’s just because it had recently rained and it was bitterly cold out. I can only imagine that on a sunny day this space would be full. I’ll make sure to visit again to capture this space on one of those days.
We all know that Copenhagen is the bicycle capital of the world. They have such a fantastic infrastructure setup for the hoards of cyclists that they are now able to begin focusing on the friendly little details of urban bicycle life. What’s the latest and greatest on the streets? A little something to lean on.
The new double railing system has tapped into a little subconcious human behavorial detail like the Paul Bennett from IDEO discussed in a TED lecture about designing for people. Basically, observe what people do and design for that. The natural behavior when it comes to bicyclists can be observed anywhere there is a pole, a person or just anything at all to lean on at a traffic light.
And not only lean, but put up a foot so they don’t have to get off the seat and maybe can even have something to push off on.
This bicycle friendly detail popped up in Copenhagen on a little island midway between crossing a street. For the people that get stuck on the island from a red light can grab onto the bar and put a foot up while they wait for the green. It’s also very nice and it reads, “Hi, cyclist! Rest your foot here… and thank you for cycling in the city.”
This friendly little detail is part of Copenhagen’s “Hi, Cyclist!” behavorial campaign developed by Mikael Colville-Andersen, also author of the blog Copenhagenize. He describes it as, “a behavioural campaign and a communications template with which the Bicycle Office can communicate with the cycling citizens. The average Copenhagener who rides to work or school each day doesn’t really pay much attention to bicycle infrastructure or even bicycles. They just ride.”
Mikael continues on to say, “We all have a sense of pride about the city in which we live. Here in Copenhagen we love to hear that we’ve been voted the world’s most liveable city and things like that. I figured that our cycling citizens should be made aware of all the positive aspects of our bike culture, in order to stimulate that inherent civic pride in relation to our cycling life.”
It’s such a simple detail, this double bar system for leaning, resting and pushing off, but it works so well because it taps into the very thing people want without overdoing it and throwing in any unnecessary bells and whistles. It also gives back to the cyclists that make the city what it is today and the friendly note offers that thanks and spreads the love.
eVolo holds a Skyscraper Competition every year with the main idea focusing on the relationship between the skyscraper and the natural world, the community and urban life. They recently started showcasing some of the entries on their blog from the competitions from 2006-2009. A recent post focused on the vertical element as using more of the traditional horizonal streetscape elements rather than traditional buildings. Too bad they don’t know how to spell “scale” ;-)
From eVolo, “The main idea behind this project is to create a vertical city with the same qualities of traditional horizontal settlements. The goal is to define an outdoors vertical street that is connected to commercial, recreational, housing, and office areas. The vertical street would have a mix of escalators, ramps, elevators, and stairs with green parks and terraces.”
“The grouping of several buildings would create a new type of city with vertical streets and bridges. There is no need for automobiles because a series of electric monorails will connect each building to create a true sustainable city. Farms, wind turbines, solar panels, and water recollection systems are the norm in this true green city typology.”
In Brisbane, architects Nettleton Tribe have tranformed an old elevated parking facility into thirteen stories of office space above 9 levels of parking and teamed up with artist Jennifer Marchant to beautify the exterior of the building. The new art piece creates made up of 549 laser cut powder coated aluminum that were custom formed into a lovely mesh that disguises the parking facility while allowing for continual air flow and therefore saving money on mechanical air ventilation.
The artist chose to design a topographical piece called “Landlines”, that depicts the contours of Brisbane’s own Cunningham’s Gap and the Main Range. The inspiration came from the very nature that urban environments tend to be cut off from the surrounding landscape and few people get to take advantage of the views seen by tall buildings that look out from the urban core. Marchant brings the contours of the landscape in and adds a twist by debicting the 2 dimensional graphic traditionally used in the professional world to depict 3 dimensional land forms and show it on a vertical building.
There’s no doubt, water should not look like that. In the Chaohu Lake in Heifei, China, it does. At least for now. But with the country putting the cleanup of it’s waterways on in it’s sights, having invested over $7 billion towards the treatment of eight rivers and lakes in 2009, hopefully things like this algae filled lake will soon be an image of the past.
Despite the unnatural state of this water, there is an amazing amount of beauty in the image. The fisherman can be seen instead as a painter, his oar the brush and the water the canvas that supplies it’s own paint. He stirs the water, skimming across the canvas in his boat and with simple strokes applies the color. He paints his movements through this somewhat surreal landscape.
The abundance and variety of shapes and patterns in the natural world goes on forever. One interesting facet of the naturally patterned world are the patterns found in the skin, hide, scales and fur of animals. The way the patterns shift and stretch as they move over the curves of the differently proportioned bodies and fit into and around various shapes and crevices is fascinating.
Patterns change and blend from a fusion of one shape to another as it transitions over the animal like an M.C. Escher drawing. These patterns are excellent studies in design, especially for tansitioning and movement in landscape architecture which can work for laying a grid over a hilly site that requires stretching to conform to the land. An example of this from a project I visited in Europe coming up in a future post.
Wednesday January 20th 2010, 12:05 pm
Filed under: Furnishing
Lines are the simplest of design forms but are so versatile. Lines can be manipulated and transformed into amazing shapes yet still maintaining that simple form of a single line. When the Finish design duo Aamu Song and Johan Olin from Company decided to play with the lines of a simple railing, they came up with new shapes that lended themselves to various uses in addition to just looking cool. The sketch below shows some of the different shapes that came from pushing or pulling at the traditional lines and how they are intended to be used.
These rails in a new Helsinki housing project also provide lovely artwork in addition to their utility. This project has been called Kaide-Taide or Art-Handling. The 8 stories of metal rails are bent into shapes that follow in the footsteps of form follows function to create shapes for leaning, sitting, and viewing.
Ideas like these simple line manipulations could be incorporated into the urban landscape to facilite quick lunches (like seen in earlier post on urban lunches), gathering and seating spaces without taking up too much valuable space.
Tuesday January 19th 2010, 2:57 pm
Filed under: Notes
I love the rain for so many reasons…the fresh smell, its life-giving properties, the artistic potential and of course the musical quality. I can sit forever just listening to the rain hit various surfaces, from light tapping to the beating on the roof tiles like drums while the wind whistles the melody through the trees and the sound of thunder crashing like cymbals just as the song reaches the climax.
The last couple nights have been really stormy with lots of wind and I have enjoyed turning out the lights to sit and listen to all the different sounds swirling around my house and the occasional howling in through the air vents. It made me think of the amazing vocal group from Slovenia, Perpetuum Jazzile who performed an acapella version of Toto’s “Africa” with an astounding introduction using voice, hands and feet to simulate a rain storm with crashing thunder. I’m not easily impressed by vocal perfomances but when you mix an amazing song and a storm it’s gonna catch my attention. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out:
Wednesday January 13th 2010, 5:03 pm
Filed under: Living Wall
A recent post about the living wall at the cafe at Nike in the Condesa neighborhood in Mexico City displayed one example of the many lush vegetated walls that are popping up around Mexico City from Verde360.
Verde360 is a Mexico City-based compay founded in 2006 that specializes in the design and construction of living walls in urban settings. The members are on a mission to contribute to the greening of large cities by way of innovative green technologies like living walls. They’ve sent me images of some of the walls they have completed around their city which are truly inspiring in their lushness, variety and success. At the end there is also a sneak peak of a project for 2010.
First, expanding upon the previous post, some images from the cafe courtyard at the Nike sportsware store in the Condesa neighorhood of Mexico City, built in August of 2008. The mounding was built specifically for the green wall which covers 180 square meters. The space is open to the public.
The next wall resides in the open central courtyard in a private Mexico City home apartment. Built in 2008, the abundantly vegetated living wall measures at 4 meters in length and 5 meters high and receives natural light.
The following images are from the outside of the Restaurant Solotto in the trendy Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City. This wall which runs from the public sidewalk to the top of the building was built in February 2009 and covers 82 square meters of this east-facing building facade.
On the terrace floor of the Restaurant Solotto, there are two living walls covering 21 square meters as well as a vegetated multi-story column inside the restaurant that reaches 15 meters high and is lit from the below.
In Mexico City’s Sante Fe Shopping Mall, Verde360 have designed a lush display wall for the Steve Madden retail store. This double-sided indoor living wall is 6 meters in height and 2.5 meters in width with artificial lighting.
In a private home in San Angel, Mexico City, this 2.5 meter wide wall of vegetation reaches up 6.5 meters in a sunny courtyard. The living wall is south facing with lots of natural light and was built in February 2007. I love the huge ferns and the way some of the plants defy the boundaries of the wall.
In the Benito Juarez International Airport, the Mexicana Airline proudly displays their support for the vertical greening of Mexico City with a 20 meter long living wall in their check in lounge that sits 2.7 meters in height. Artifical lighting adds to the effect.
At the International Airport of Toluca, a city just outside of Mexico City, this living wall displays the logo of a company at their private hanger. The double sided wall was built in May 2009 and sits 14 meters long and 4 meters high. This wall displays a very different character from many of their other designs. Instead of flowing clusters of plants these plants are confined to a rigid design in order to exhibit a company logo. The plant choices here therefore are different and yet just as beautiful.
In another private home in San Angel, this living wall integrated with a 2.5 meter wide water feature and pool was built in April 2008 and reaches to the top of the building at 6.5 meters high.
And finally a future project for 2010 has Verde360 working on greening an intriguing structure for the El Volador Market in the Mexico City center. It will be interesting to see this project unfold.
Below are some images from their mobile test wall done for the Mexican Government for the El Volador market project. This wall was built in August 2009 at the office building of the authorities of the historic center of Mexico City. The test wall is 4 meters wide and 6 meters high.
