Mosiac by Gerhard Richter.

Cologne, Germany. The Cathedral’s window has been destroyed in Second World War and the original documentation of the artwork was lost. That made reconstruction impossible. Gerhard Richter, a 1932 born German artist, was asked to design a new stained glass window as a replacement for the provisional window done after the war. The window is a 113 m² pixel-collage of 11,500 squares in 72 colors, a reminiscent of the painting "4096 colors", done in 1974: a projection of digital noise. Richter did the work for free (the costs of about 350.000 Euro was donated).

Mosaic Window by Gerhard Richter, photo by melekalikimaka, flickr

Gerhard Richter is a superstar in the international art world. His diverse and hugely influential body of work ranges from quasi-photorealistic paintings to abstract compositions in brilliant colours. The Albertina is showing around 80 oil paintings, 80 watercolours and a selection of drawings that have been assembled for this major retrospective cover the many different phases of Richter’s artistic career from 1963 to 2007.

GERHARD RICHTER: RETROSPECTIVE
30 January - 3 May 2009
Albertina, Vienna

Building Layers or The Speed of Change.

According to Stewart Brand, author of "How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built", buildings consist of layers, and each has its own value and speed of change. He quotes six components of differing time span: stuff, the space plan, services, skin, structure and the site.

(diagram inspired by Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, page 13, the pie diagram shows the changes to systems in a US office building over an average lifespan of 35 years [figures from Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, pp12-13])

The site has eternal life whereas elements like the space plan (e.g. the organization of the interior walls) might have a life expectancy between three to thirty years. The question rises whether a building can evolve over time? Likewise, designing flexible buildings is a key to sustainable design. It makes sense to design structures that are built to last. Nowadays, it is even hardly possible to change an apartment building to an office building or vice versa.

Architecture sometimes is rather "tailor-made" for a certain program than open to different functions. Shouldn’t be our buildings be more flexible in design?

How Buildings Learn.

What happens to buildings after their built? When the users take over and begin to reshape the building to suite their own needs? In 1997, BBC TV aired a six-part, three-hour series, based on Stewart Brand’s book, "How Buildings Learn". The whole series has been posted on Google Video in six 30-minutes parts. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). [via kottke.org]

"One of the main problems is that architects and their clients often concentrate more on the look of a building than its eventual use or function. [..] Works of architecture tend to have great facades to look impressive and original in the magazines, but the ways these buildings might work, develop or grow don’t appear in the magazines at all and so they are given low priority.

[..]

Buildings keep changing: people either have to or want to keep reworking them to seek the unfolding patterns of their lives. Architects understand their buildings to be finished and perfect but it’s impossible. Reality makes the new building necessarily unfinished and imperfect but perhaps perfectible in time. If that reality were designed for, architects could do civilization a great service. Buildings need to learn the same way we do. Give them time."

Garage Door Masonry.

Garage door in fake ashlar masonry (almost like Paris).

Superinsulation.

Energy-optimized buildings usually require thick thermal insulation: Improved insulation can lead to energy efficiency and will reduce CO2 output. Superinsulation is one of the strategies to achieve the passive house standard – a standard for central Europe which requires that the building fulfills certain requirements, for example: a building must not use more than 15 kWh/m² per year.
Is the resulting wall thickness aesthetically questionable in architectural design? Does it result in bunker-like structures? Definitely, designers should be aware of the growing demand of thermal insulation – and - why not go for bulky buildings?

Congratulations.

Barack Obama inauguration on German TV

Building Site: Jean Nouvel in Vienna.

Jean Nouvel, multifunctional building for Uniqa, building site, image by anarchitecture, building on the left by Hans Hollein

In 2005 Ateliers Jean Nouvel has won an architectural competition for a new multifunctional building for a insurance firm in Vienna. The building could set a new benchmark in quality of building workmanship in Austria. Quite often, ambitious (starchitect's) projects fail due to budget constraints.

Honeycomb Paper House.

honeycomb board

SwissCell walls are based on hexagonal structures similar to honeycombs: the technique results in lightweight but strong boards, typical used in the vehicle and aircraft industry. Usually honeycomb boards are made of aluminum – an expensive and energy intensive material. SwissCell, by contrast, is a cellulose product, impregnated by synthetic resin.
Due to the low commodity price the honeycomb boards are cheap - it’s just paper! The material is also an excellent insulator. Each comb works as a ‘mini’- vacuum (Vacuum Isolated Panels) and has very good insulating properties.

prototype of the "Universal World House"

Accordingly the material will be first adopted for temporary homes in conflict area: "Universal World House"."From the very beginning, our goal was to create practical, environmentally sustainable, and, most importantly, cheap living quarters for the slums of the Earth," Gerd Niemöller, who developed the cellulose material the houses are made of, said in a recent statement. "Now, that is possible." (source: Der Spiegel - 01/13/2009). The price for 36 m² shouldn’t be more than $5,000. While the design of the “Universal World House” might be questionable, there's certainly potential in the paper-based building material.

Wohnmodelle.

cardboard model of Elemental Iquique , Wohnmodelle, Künstelerhaus, Vienna, image by anarchitecture

Twelve international housing projects address a question: How does experimental architecture work in everyday life? Not as a question of esthetics, but usability? The projects in the exhebition Wohnmodelle at the Künstlerhaus (Vienna, Austria) vary in scope and cover a broad set of issues ranging from row housing, dwelling towers, minimal apartments, high-density housing and more. Each of the eleven selected international housing structures must have been inhabited for at least two years, so that marks of usage and appropriation are already evident. The exhibition features cardboard mockups of these housing projects – some of them even in scale 1:1.

Elemental Iquique, image by inhabitants

Projects: Archer Courts, Social Housing in Mulhouse, Tierra Nueva Farm Labor Housing, Elemental Iquique, Moriyama House, Shinonome Canal Court, Wohnüberbauung Balance Uster, POS - Social Housing, One Row of Houses – 17 Row Houses, Sargfabrik and Anklamer Straße 52.

Architectural experimentation meets lived-in everyday life! You can download a PDF file of the exhibition catalog here.

Wohnmodelle
Künstlerhaus
16. Dezember 2008 - 22. Februar 2009
10 – 18 uhr donnerstag 10 – 21 uhr

Accidental Maps.

Accidental maps - made me smile. [via infosthetics.com]

Vantage Point - Felice Varini.

Entre ciel et terre, 2005 by Felice Varini, photo (c) André Morin - courtesy Art et Entreprise

Felice Varini (born in Locarno, Switzerland) is a Paris based artist. His canvas "is architectural space and everything that constitutes such space". Felice Varini’s works have only one view point from which people can see his 'paintings', and from that vantage point, his artwork merges with architecture and the surrounding. "If I establish a particular relation to architectural features", Felice Varini says "that influence the installation shape, my work still preserves its independence whatever architectural spaces I encounter."

Westside - by Libeskind.

Westside Mall, by Studio Daniel Libeskind. (image by Ute Bauer)

"Ever since I began architecture, I had an abhorrence to conventional architecture offices. There was something about the atmosphere of redundancy ,routine and production that made me allergic to all forms of specialization and so-called professionalism. Ten years ago we founded our office in Berlin as a result of a decision, an accident, a rumor on the street and began an unimaginable journey down a path on which we are still traveling."

(source: waybackmaschine, Website Studio Libeskind, from Sep.22, 2001)

Completed in October 2008, the Westside shopping and leisure complex in the outskirts of Bern is Libeskind’s first finished building in Europe, purely dedicated to a commercial program. The architecture and design of the building has strong similarities to Libeskind’s museum projects like the Jewish Museum Berlin or the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Osnabrück.

Westside offers a book shop devoted to the architecture of the shopping mall and the architecture of Daniel Libeskind.

shop dedicated to Daniel Libeskind and Westside