Urban Planning Blog

“The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures.”

So spam does have a use after all. Would you be living in a building built by spam? It sure would be interesting.

One of my favorite buildings, The Guggenheim Museum i currently undergoing renovation. Stripping away the paint has revealed an interesting detail.

Google’s headquarters or fondly known as Googleplex required an unique design brief. It needed to “balance its utopian desire for transparency with its very real need for privacy.” L.A.-based design firm Clive Wilkinson Architects negotiated a steep learning curve to understand the way Google works and then design spaces to optimize their performance. The design was a mix of open spaces that we so identify with Google and enclosed private spaces that engineers need to code furiously.

However, after spending time with Page and Brin and the Google engineers that would occupy the building, Wilkinson realized that he was dealing with a distinctly different species of personnel. “We’ve always worked with people who were a mix of left and right brain,” Wilkinson says, “but engineers are very left brain. They might work in teams, but they require a high level of concentration; they sit in front of the computer and crunch formulas in the most extraordinary way.”

Read more.

Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are reinventing the look and feel of skylines, bridges, facades and other architectural surfaces around the globe. The light bulb is being unscrewed by energy-efficient LEDs that are both environmentally friendly and cost-effective. The $10.2 billion industry is growing to provide new design options for architects and planners. [source]

Light plays an important role not just in photography or historic preservation but also in regular design. Of course, playing with sunlight is a better course of action but when the sun goes down, technology takes over. And to an admirable effect too.

The Empire State Building is 75 today. I love this quote: “You know, man is the only animal clever enough to build the Empire State Building and stupid enough to jump off it!”

An amazing compact apartment that used an interlocking system to maximize space in an urban apartment.

Library design with “reclaimed fuselages of 727/737 passenger jets”. Cool and cheap manner to recycle when it is expensive to do so in traditional ways.

The American Institute for Architects has announced its list of Top Ten Green Projects. I have seen the UT School of Nursing and Student Center in Houston but haven’t had the pleasure to have walked through it.

Do people need unique houses? I saw this question posed over at City Comforts Blog. Well, the natural and first reaction to that question is duh! People are hell bent upon literally carving their own niche when it comes to building their home. Or at least most of them start out that way. Historically building design much less home design has hardly changed and most of the innovations have been made in structural design – something that you hardly or never see and material quality; something that you may see all the time. But take a step back and you will understand why the basic concept of a dwelling hasn’t changed much. Four walls, a roof, and a floor – are the basic essentials that have sufficed for different people and different culture. Of course, somewhere along the way a Frank Lloyd Wright or a Frank O’ Gehry (what’s with the name Frank?) comes along and causes a paradigm shift. But most of their clients are rich and often like their designs because they have something to show off to.

Coming back to our question, do people really need unique houses that stand out from their surroundings? Probably some do; but for most it is merely a comfortable state of living. Either the fancy dreams of utopian living are limited by site availability (not everyone gets a Falling Water site) or financial restraints (that cantilever may look fancy but nosiree, not for your wallet). The ones who can afford to splurge often have fancy homes and then end up closing off any views to their home from public eye citing privacy concerns. Architectural Digest comes out every month with pages of outstanding homes with great technological features, comfort amenities, or distinguishing features but at the core, they still are the same. It is much like modern art; many people love to look at it in a gallery but they wouldn’t put it up in their homes. They rather prefer the traditional landscape image or floral pictures. Take a long around you at the many housing projects popping all over Mumbai’s landscapes. If the market determines the consumer’s preferences, you see little difference in the housing sold over the last 25 years.

Finally, I do agree with the conclusion over at the referring blog i.e. most people settle for generic homes but a little uniqueness goes a long way to make them feel different.

A Japanese photo-blog of modern/contemporary architecture. One image of architectural beauty (well, at least most of the times) every day.

A Charles Correa-designed building, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research was opened recently on MIT campus.

Daniel Libeskind manages to retain his sanity amongst the fuzziness of designing a public building that is doomed to remain in the limelight.

The High Museum in Atlanta opens its new extension. This conversation between the building’s architect Renzo Piano and Richard Mier is enlightening.