Urban Planning Blog

Let this be the best 12 minutes of your day. Watch it full-screen and in HD. And when you are done watching, read the description for a surprise.

A nice gallery of Jean Nouvel’s fantastic architectural works. Jean Nouvel was awarded the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture. In fact, he also designs home objects like bathroom faucets and showers that incorporate touch sensor technology that look to be inspired by Playstation.

[via World Architecture News]

A Daily Dose of Architecture brings our attention to the delightfully simplistic architecture of the Shanely Building. A fan of traditional ‘Rotring’ architectural rendering, I love how the end result was so close to the drawing.

The Rogers Stirk Harbour proposed design concept for the Transbay Terminal was unveiled earlier this week. The proposed towers will be the tallest structures on the West Coast.

Jim Leftwich [via Boing Boing] has a different view of the design. He proposes couple of additions to the design and envisions a Middle Earth-esque vision for San Francisco. See his modified design below:

more »

Constructing a cantilever structure is one of the most difficult things for a structural engineers to do. Remember the thumb-rule – for every foot cantilevered, you must anchor it at the support to a depth of 1.5 feet. For an architect, cantilevers are beautiful things and can literally extend capabilities of their building while remaining beautiful. They offer limitless opportunites but are beyond the technical capabilities of architects to maximize their utility completely. This struggle between the structural engineer and the architect has always been fraught with compromises and hence mediocrity in design. That’s why it is a refreshing change to see structures that push the envelope and exist in defiance to all logic:

[source]

Architecture continues to push boundaries and of course, Daniel Libeskind is doing his share of pushing as designs for Gazprom City in St.Petersburg [HQ for the Russian gas giant] stream in. The building is expected to rise at least 300m into the air and symbolize the growing power of the firm. Check out the other designs in the image gallery – each is more ambitious than the other.

After 9/11, people were ready to write off towering skyscrapers as they tend to be sitting ducks for potential terrorism. But they are larger than ever and fears of terrorism are history. Right from the age of the Pyramids, bigger has always been considered better but is it really? Such a tall building in the heart of historic St.Petersburg is a virtual slap in the face of the city’s urbanscape. I have always believed in contextual design and this is so not it. But then again, change is revolutionary and departs from the status quo.

Technorati Tags: Daniel Libeskind, St. Petersburg, Gazprom, Russia, design, architecture, skyscraper

I remember visiting Chandigarh and being saddened by the level of security at the Capitol Complex. Le Corbusier’s sculptural buildings were sandbagged and protected heavily with machine-gun toting security guards. The vast expanse of the central plaza between the Assembly Building and the High Court was interrupted by a barb wire fence that looked not only ungainly but reminded you of a turbulent past. Punjab was hit by a period of insurgency that has now totally disappeared but such remanants of architecture tainted by security measures have now remained as a permanent fixture like almost an unseperable appendage.

I had participated in a design competition that asked for a reconceptualization of the unbuilt Governor’s Palace. We had integrated the adjoining plaza as a gathering place to represent the exuberance of Punjab and its jolly people. We wanted the re-use of the feudal structure to be as democratic as possible. But I bet this was looked down upon purely from the perspective of security. The city could not trust its own citizens.

Bruce Schneier writes on a similar theme about architecture and security. His examples are a stark reminder of the cautious nature of man protecting the people against a threat that might not even exist:

When Syracuse University built a new campus in the mid-1970s, the
student protests of the late 1960s were fresh on everybody’s mind. So
the architects designed a college without the open greens of
traditional college campuses. It’s now 30 years later, but Syracuse
University is stuck defending itself against an obsolete threat.Concrete building barriers are an exception: They’re removable. They
started appearing in Washington, D.C., in 1983, after the truck bombing
of the Marines barracks in Beirut. After 9/11, they were a sort of
bizarre status symbol: They proved your building was important enough
to deserve protection.

It is indeed sad to see security triumph architectural aesthetics or even functionality. Vulnerable countries like India and Israel have often lived with a constant threat and such security-first architecture is almost expected and taken for granted.

Technorati Tags: security, architecture, threat, 9/11, Chandigarh, Le Corbusier

openhousenewyork (OHNY) will present the 4th Annual OHNY Weekend, America’s largest architecture and design event, October 7 & 8, 2006. Presented by Target, OHNY Weekend provides the public with free access to more than 180 sites of architecture and design significance throughout all five boroughs, including many that are normally closed to the public, as well as 120 tours, talks, performances and family activities and workshops that explore New York City by foot, bus, bicycle and even canoe.

[Source]

One of the big challenges was to establish a natural gathering place for architecture students that would also unite the disparate elements around it, from the 19th-century rustic style of Sibley Hall to the early-20th-century industrial style of Rand Hall. Rather than create a showy building thrusting upward or sprawling outward, Mr. Koolhaas said, he transformed a parking lot into what is essentially a flat plate, with one level above and one below.

Rem Koolhaas returns to his alma mater Cornell University to unveil his new design for the school of architecture. Planned since 1990, the design plans of two earlier architects were scrapped. Koolhaas was hired in January and his design almost immediately found acceptance.

I love the quirky homes on the West coast. The cities on the west coast have a unique sense of character which although can be weird at time is mostly refreshing from the sameness that we encounter in the American urban wasteland. Seattle Dream Homes, a real estate resource network showcases unique home designs and not just your run-of-the-mill cookie cutter subdivision homes.

One such quirky home is Lisa Petrucci’s home. Looks like an ordinary home from the outside, complete with a pink flamingo in the yard, it is a virtual delight from the inside. It certainly seems like a house that has been lived in and not like those fancy homes that are meant only for the architectural magazines photo-ops. Lisa has an amazing collection of dolls, photo frames, and exotic artefacts. I liked this “reading center” section of her home. It looks like a children’s dream home.

Technorati Tags: dream homes, Seattle, art, interiors, houses, residential, real estate

Pretty cool animation walkthrough of the famous Kaufmann house or as popularly known, Falling Water by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Although this animation doesn’t compare to the real thing which I did couple of years back, it can be the next best thing. However, don’t expect someone to jump out and start shooting. If you do, probably you should be playing fewer video games and watching more walkthroughs

After reviewing subway logos last week, we turn our attention to actual subway structures which can be a work of art in itself.

There is surely something about bagging a public transit terminal design contract that makes architects go whoopie! They tend to stretch their imaginations, work in collaboration with artists and structural engineers, and turn out really interesting pieces of work. You can even imagine these structures to be completely functional first and yet amazingly captivating. This design by Santiago Calatrava for the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) terminal at the World Trade Center (WTC) site in Lower Manhattan is already creating a buzz:

Although airports can be pretty dramatic, for now we turn our attention to subways. See more pictures here. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: subways, metro, architecture, beautiful structures, art, World Trade Center, Santiago Calatrava

Wouldn’t you kill for a view like that? Well, except you don’t have to.

A company of architecture of Barcelona and a group of aircraft
engineers of Florida (EUA) are developing a prototype of room of space
hotel, baptized like Galactic Suite, so that the tourists and astronauts who are decided to travel to the space have a site where to lodge.

Read more.

Technorati Tags: space, hotel, technology, Galatic Suite, architecture

An awesome panoramic picture [via] (click to view larger version) of one of my favorite buildings, The Guggenheim Museum at New York.

Technorati Tags: Guggenheim, panorama, photo, New York, Frank Lloyd Wright, photography