Machine Thinking » architecture

Sliding House

William — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:06:59 +0000

dezeen has photographs and an informative article here

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3D video mapping by Easyweb

William — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:30:41 +0000

French design company Easyweb mixes video projectors and architecture with impressive results

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Richard Ross’s Architecture of Authority

William — Sat, 24 May 2008 00:49:03 +0000

Richard Ross’s Architecture of Authority documents the space in which authority is executed.

For the past several years–and with seemingly limitless access–photographer Richard Ross has been making unsettling and thought-provoking pictures of architectural spaces that exert power over the individuals within them. From a Montessori preschool to churches, mosques and diverse civic spaces including a Swedish courtroom, the Iraqi National Assembly hall and the United Nations, the images in Architecture of Authority build to ever harsher manifestations of power: an interrogation room at Guantanamo, segregation cells at Abu Ghraib, and finally, a capital punishment death chamber.Though visually cool, this work deals with hot-button issues–from the surveillance that increasingly intrudes on post-9/11 life to the abuse of power and the erosion of individual liberty. The connections among the various architectures are striking, as Ross points out: “The Santa Barbara Mission confessional and the LAPD robbery homicide interrogation rooms are the same intimate proportions. Both are made to solicit a confession in exchange for some form of redemption.” Essay by Harper’s Magazine publisher, John R. MacArthur, also a columnist for the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Link to photos (via BoingBoing)

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The construction of the Eiffel Tower

William — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:06:12 +0000

Any tall construction has to be engineered to with stand the forces of the wind. You can accomplish this in two ways – making something so heavy the wind could never push it over, or make your construction so sparse as to not give the wind hardly anything to push against. For the tower Gustave Eiffel – a master of iron bridges and probably the first serious student of aerodynamics – used an iron filigree such that the wind has almost no grip on it even though it is constructed of over 15,000 pieces. If melted down to the size of it’s base (about four acres) the molten iron would rise to a height of only about 2.3 inches.

Before the four buttresses met at the first platform 180 feet off the ground they had to be supported by large wooden trusses. If any of them was off by even a tenth of a degree it would mean inches of difference at the top. To solve this problem Eiffel put the temporary trusses on hydraulic jacks so the permanent sides could be adjusted slightly for the pieces that connected them.

To get the pieces up the tower a set of “creeping cranes” was employed using the future elevator rails as they were constructed. The cranes could construct about 30 feet above their position and then ascend to begin the process again.

Probably the first important work of Modernism, the tower had to give into a few Victorian aesthetics of the time. On the first platform gingerbread arches that were purely decorative were eventually removed. Also, below the first platform are arches meant to remind Persians of their bridges. These arches have no structural purpose thus some find they are a discredit to the structural simplicity – while others find them a pleasant compliment to the exterior curves. Either way the remain to this day.

Finished in 1889 (where it served at the entrance arch for Exposition Universelle) at a final height of 1,063 ft (at the antenna) it was not surpassed in height until New York City’s Chrysler Building was finished in 1930.

Wikipedia – Eiffel Tower

Thanks to Mario Salvadori’s Why Buildings Stand Up

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The Future of the past, part II

William — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:35:12 +0000

High Ferriss, “The Metropolis of Tomorrow” 1929

(Fritz Lang’s famous “Metropolis” movie, 1927)

via darkroastedblend

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Tallest Skyscraper in the World to be built in Moscow: Crystal Island

William — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:34:03 +0000

“The Crystal Island will be Lord Foster’s second large scale project in the Russian capital, and his third new building design that resembles a volcano (we’re talking about his two mountainous buildings in Astana, Kazakstan). Although many people are calling this design the ‘Christmas Tree’ of Moscow – we can’t help but be reminded of the utopian and also rather volcanic X-Seed 4000 design for Tokyo. Unlike that pipe-dream project, however, Foster has a track record of getting buildings built, so the likelihood is high that we will see this striking structure towering over the Kremlin within 5 years time.”

via inhabitat.com

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Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark’s clock | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

William — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:24:03 +0000

Four members of an underground “cultural guerrilla” movement known as the Untergunther, whose purpose is to restore France’s cultural heritage, were cleared on Friday of breaking into the 18th-century monument in a plot worthy of Dan Brown or Umberto Eco.

For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon’s unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid “illegal restorers” set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building’s famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.

Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark’s clock | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

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