SHOEI YOH
Taikouyama-land Observatory, Toyama, 1992

Exterior (Distant View)

Light, Fog, and Sound Show

Exterior (Close-up)

marcos novak - transarchitectures and the transmodern

One: After a century of surprises, architecture faces the greatest surprise of all: the development of an unprecedented form of urban and architectural digital space, a global, non-physical public space, place after territory. Even though the infrastructure for this non-local public domain is already well under construction, it has yet to receive the attention of an informed and critical architectural discourse. Still, even without architects, numerous multi-user virtual environments already exist, with populations in the thousands. The population of Alphaworld alone is already over 200,000. Where are the architects?
Two: Digital virtuality is not limited to cyberspace, however. Enabled by the ubiquity of computation, implemented as an electronic vernacular of cell phones, fiberoptics and satellites, and empowered by production techniques and processes that allow unprecedented invention of form and matter, virtuality forms a new zeitgeist that has manifestations in every aspect of our existence. Not only have we created a new virtual public space for architecture, we have also altered the ways in which we inhabit actual space: the spatial and temporal terms by which we work, play, learn, and live are all increasingly intelligent, non-contiguous and non-retinal, and existing in electronically mediated non-Euclidean multidimensional curved spacetimes that overlap our familiar Euclidean reality.

Three: Concurrently, the ways in which we conceive, preview, model, and fabricate actual buildings have also mutated. The plan is dead. Representation has been temporalized and operationalized as interface for dynamic simulations. The computer model has become both description and instruction for rapid prototyping and robotic construction of complex form.

These three aspects, new virtual space, radically altered intelligent physical spacetime, and new ways of conceiving and manufacturing built form must be conjoined into a single, expanded notion of architecture. At the threshold to a new millennium, as informational and material, virtual and actual, possible and real become increasingly intertwined, we need to take pause and articulate new projects for new architectures: transarchitectures.

Materially, an architecture of our times is one that is conceived algorithmically, prototyped rapidly, fabricated robotically; it is an architecture that is inherently intelligent and interactive, where space is attentive and time is smart; it is an architecture that is open to global telepresence, achieving closure only by extensions to remote sites.

Informationally, an architecture of our times is likewise conceived algorithmically, executed computationally, and inhabited interactively; it is likewise an architecture of watchful virtual space and astute sampled time. More than this, virtual space is characterized by three intrinsic features: inherent non-locality and multiplicity, a fundamental shift from an Albertian fixed viewpoint to a condition of interactive presence, and a radical variability of elective or fictional physics.

The fundamental discipline of computational virtuality involves the replacement of all constants with variables. Topology, defined as the study of those relationships that are invariant under transformations and deformations, is challenged by computation. The encounter of computation and topology produces a new conceptual entity: the notion of 'variable topology'. This apparent self-contradiction, is resolved on a higher, 'meta-' level. Variable topology, like liquid architecture and artificial life, is a condition in which invariance is not of form but of generative principle or algorithmic meta-form. Discrete or continuous, conditional or stochastic, variable topology provides useful characterizations of Deleuzean smooth space without requiring a mortifying loss of nomadic freedom.

Transarchitecture is a mutlithreaded, multitasking architecture that weaves the informational and the material, the virtual and the actual, the possible and the real. Rooted in notions of metamorphosis, the prefix 'trans~' signifies a condition of change that, though growing out of familiar sources, soon reaches an identity separate from those sources. The 'transdisciplinary' differs from the 'interdisciplinary' or the 'multidisciplinary' in that it reaches outside the purview of previous definitions, into previously unrecognized areas of inquiry. While Paul Virilio's lucid term 'stereo-reality' makes clear the stereoscopic effect of the doubling of the real by the virtual, I think the term 'transreal' explains the fundamentally alien character of the reality that emerges from that stereopsis, and points directly to the overarching project of the transmodern.

lars spuybroek - the strategy of the form (fragment)

What is the form of a football team? The players no longer function separately in space, rather they form a fluid system: a field, or even a magnetic field, so that attack and defence are constantly alternated. For that reason, its form is soft but not weak because the stability of the team is rooted in its dynamics, in hair-trigger reactions to the flux of circumstance. The side's shared consciousness gives the game power and direction, and the ball automatically follows this vector. Hence, the players (of both sides) are in fact curves in the turf so that they are transformed into a landscape, into something between surface and space, with a dimension that fluctuates between 2.0 and 3.0. Everything that is static, is condemned to death. Nothing that lives, can exist without transformation. This is what Sanford Kwinter calls a soft system: a system driven by its very 'softness', its capacity to move, to differentiate internally, to absorb, transform, and exchange information with its surroundings. What is Life?: a living organism has the astonishing gift of concentrating a 'stream of order' on itself and thus escaping the decay into atomic chaos. (Schrödinger) A fluid system's ability to maintain order is due to its ability to alter its structure. This means that order does not exist as form in space but as movement in time: a direction. And if a form is to continue, it must be able to transform itself. This does not concern a form that can move, but rather a movement that passes through the form. By changing form, soft systems or living entities try to remain intact and strong.
Lars Spuybroek & Maurice Nio

Lars Spuybroek / Nox, Son-O-House, Ekkersrijt (under construction)






http://www.designvormgeving.nl/pagina/1spuybroeklille.htm
http://www.vividvormgeving.nl/pagina/spuybroek.htm

Chicago's ridiculous Millennium Park private sculpture
"Cloud Gate"


http://flickr.com/photos/search/tags:cloud+gate/tagmode:any

ATLANTA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA UNVEILS A SOARING
DESIGN BY SANTIAGO CALATRAVA FOR THE NEW ATLANTA SYMPHONY CENTER


http://www.atlantasymphonycenter.org/

zhodnotili sme po prednaske, ze z FOA sa stava kvalitny ultraPOP. aj ti mladi chalosi z FOA co tu boli s nou, po prednaske vo verne vraveli, ze Farshid vzdy hovori "len ziadne metafory!" a ked videli ten stadion a svalstvo sportovca (videli to prvy krat, lebo na tom nerobili) dost ich to pobavilo. zacala sa nova etapa FOA,
prachy a prachy a prachy... ale vsetka cest, zasluzia si to. yokohama im zobrala urcite peknych par rokov zivota. rspct

Farshid Moussavi - quick tour
http://www.designmuseum.org/designinbritain/index.php?id=109

The Ideal City
A Discussion Paper in Preparation for the
WORLD URBAN FORUM 2006

http://www.finearts.ubc.ca/faculty/rhodri/The_Ideal_City.pdf

Pools of ice, geometric in the ground, with figures--human and not--frozen, suspended in them.

You walk, skate on the ice pools.
You look down, into the ice.
You see, or almost see, the figures.
Snow blows across the ice pools, covering edges, and the figures, too.
In the day, the figures are shadows in the dark ice.
In the night, the ice glows and the figures are illuminated, though darkly.
They have been there, forever.
Waiting.
Now the ice is melting.
The ice pools are melting, and the figures are revealed. Little by little, they emerge from the melting ice.
In the end, there are only the empty pools, empty of ice and of water.
The figures rest on the bottom of the empty pools.
Then the pools are filled with earth.

Lebbeus Woods


Either by proximity, osmosis, telepathy or serendipity, Lebbeus and I separately had a desire to manifest a similar situation in Lapland. Given the enormous range of possibilities, it somehow occurred to both of us to make
something that lays in the land,
a mirror to the sky,
an illumination,
a murky pond,
an observatory,
a magic well,
a hole, a sunken treasure,
a starscape,
a light drawing,
quiet, dangerous,
an open cavity that makes itself apparent for a time then erases itself back into the land

Kiki Smith

mountain of books



MVRDV ma zase raz dostali. straaasne dobre & ftipne & easy & lacne & funguje & archetip & textury & skoro fsecko co mam rad

Caute architekti, zdravim z cypru z atelieru www.armeftis.com Nieco ako normy tu nepoznaju a ked, tak velmi volne, zabradlie moze byt ake sa ti lubi schodov
v ramene mozes urobit kolko si zmyslis a tak, rano som isiel do roboty len
v kratkej koseli a saku :) . Z roboty je vyhlad na more plne obrovskych
lodi. Byt je v pohode a zatial aj setko ostatne. Robia tu vsetko mozne aj
take akoze moderne aj akoze tradicne a vsetko beru ako vaznu architekturu :)

'The Hermitage', a seven-meter long steel and zinc installation by American architect Lebbeus Woods, was donated to NAI on the 15th of July. The futuristic sculpture was applied to the NAI building as a piece of architectural jewelry. Simultaneously Show room Mama in the nearby Witte de Withstraat opened the multi-disciplinary exhibition 'City City Bang Bang', in which several young artists, architects and performers presented a vision of the Western city inspired by Lebbeus Woods' ideas.

Christian Waldvogel
www.globus-cassus.org
Transforming the Earth into Globus Cassus
as of September 8, 2004 by Michael Stauffer and Christian Waldvogel

The rapidly increasing population notices that their planet will soon be too small. The Earth is dismantled to provide building material. This is taken away to create Globus Cassus, a new, much bigger habitat, thought out from scratch.

Four satellites orbit at a constant distance above the Earth. The satellites grow towards the Earth, and away from it. This creates four towers. The four towers have lifts in them to move building materials and people out.
Nodes are constructed at the top of the lifts. People live in these nodes while the Earth is being rebuilt. Connections are created between the nodes. A skeleton spanning the Earth completely is constructed from these intermediate pieces.


«Das Molukkenkabel», 2003

Magma is pumped up to the nodes from inside the Earth and expanded. The magma is made into a very thin shell. In certain areas, shells are not made, but transparent, inward-curving window domes. The more magma is pumped away from the Earth, the more the Earth shrinks.

The Earth's mass is reduced enormously, the oceans and the air are no longer held strongly enough. They detach themselves from the Earth and the Great Rains begin. At the same time, people are making their way to Greater Earth. The atmosphere moves to Globus Cassus. Rivers, lakes, seas form in the topography that has been built there. People build cities.

After the Great Rains, richly varied vegetation develops on Globus Cassus. People keep building new cities, start to live in a new way, settling and dwelling in their new habitat, Globus Cassus.

There is enough room on Globus Cassus, there are different climate zones, varied landscapes, and absolute freedom of choice is guaranteed for dwellings and habitat. All basic needs are met. The financial system is separated from the economy. Society is permeable.


«Der Progressive Äquator», 2003

http://a.parsons.edu/~mateo/thesis/installation.html

a mame tu priesvitny beton http://www.ta3.com/svettechnologii/040105-3.html

http://www.designboom.com/closeup/zahahadid.html

approach the future - the asymptote experience
http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/asymptote.html


image courtesy asymptote

http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/nonstandard.html


kovac architecture
world trade center, 2002
computer rendering


KOL/MAC studio
resi/ rise skyscraper, new york, usa, 1999
computer rendering

http://housingprototypes.org/

tak toto jo ITO

novy 3d graf od MVRDV v madride

http://bapodhradie.sk/index.php?action=12
vecny nepriatelia!

fragment of my house