000off_2012 London Summer Olympics

173ota_150m roundabout building

The site lies within the leftover space between existing departments of the University, a former crossroads of intersecting streets which the Master plan will render obsolete save for the underground below. Much like a baker rolling out dough, the proposal rolls out the programme to create a thin 150m wide two storey high base. This wide flat building will maximise connectivity to the existing buildings by being within close proximity to them. The informal existing pathways that criss-cross the site are allowed to remain as the proposal is elevated from the ground, UFO, to create below an artificial landscape, a covered forest foyer that encapsulates a small hill or dune (stair entry), a forest (timber pilotis structure), and a suspended bridge (ramp). A 150m wide circular plan produces a maximum of 17,700 sqm perforated at 30m intervals by courtyard atria for light. The programme for the school is organised in clusters of concentric circles around these atriums: the circles are of varying width according to the requisite programme: 5m wide for offices, 10m wide for classrooms, 20m for lecture halls etc. The concentric plan organisation of the school lies is contrast to the map-like form of the ground plan. The roof of the school is both a space recreational (ice-skating, tennis) as well as a plateau for renewable energies: PV on the roof illuminate the forest foyer below… TBC Design process brought to you by iPhone SketchPad.

000off_UNDERGROUND

Nowhere as good as the recently posted 000OFF_ハイスイノナサ”地下鉄の動態, Michel Gondry’s Star Guitar or even or own Olivier Giambattista’s rub 127SHO_SITE GUITAR, nonetheless Jacques Lu Cont’s Underground adds to the WHAT_lineage of train tracks…

1736ota_TALKING BUILDINGS: DESIGN AS QUOTATION VS INTERPRETATION?

The starting point for an architecture school at the AaA University should not start with a denial of AaA, but acceptance. Page 20 from the book ‘AaA through the eyes of shigeru ban’ could be a founding image: the forest suggests pathways through landscapes; the roof not just cover but programme. Where we go in terms of interpretation of AaA’s work could follow the development of architecture from Nordic modernism into the age of digital globalism. We could be not site specific but architectonically specific.
We have a language at our disposal, not a linguistic language (Finnish) but an architectural language which we could use to relearn, rebuild, reassess and refresh AaA for the 21st Century. And an architectural school is about history, research, design, reference, interpretation, quotation. Talking buildings…
INTERPRETATION 1:
INTERPRETATION 2: Building reduced to domestic object…
INTERPRETATION 3: Building as Cityscape…

141sie_Freetown House

Freetown? Freeplan!

048PER_ARCHITECTURE WITHOUT ARCHITECTS

Simulacrum. Philosopher Fredric Jameson offered photorealism as an example of artistic simulacrum, where a painting is sometimes created by copying a photograph that is itself a copy of the real. Other art forms that play with simulacra include Trompe l’oeil, Pop Art, Italian neorealism and the French New Wave. In the images below, the thin blue line represents a proposal sited within the existing. It’s a low budget, hand-craft technique.

000OFF_NATIONAL SURVEY: AUSTRALIA.

Architects like to align spaces! A realignment of the original Australian survey places the city of Brisbane in the state of New South Wales. No problem there one imagines.

177mot_Motiti Sovereignty

A master plan for an island should be one that befits an island culture. That is a unified and holistic. Not divide and rule nor increasingly fragmented. Neither Maori vs Pakeha, neither North vs South, but a master plan that can present a sustainable future first and foremost for those that live on The Island.  Motiti sovereignty! .

129fil_French ‘Africa Hitech’

129fil_soundscaper Steve Spacek brings Afrika Hitech to Village Underground… http://www.villageunderground.co.uk/events/dub-sessions-vol-1 Rewind:  

129FIL_GENOISE

Thanks to wikipedia and google translate : “The cake is a closed eaves (the underside of eaves) formed of several rows (one to four) tile-channel cantilever on the wall. The role of the cake is a move away from the runoff of the facade as a cornice, and secondly to support the pan and continue to slope roof.”
“Génoise”  roof/recipe is from Genova, Italia,  appears in south of France in the XVII  century, it was a wall protection, a way of avoiding birds/wind in the roof,  and until Bastille Day (14 july 1789)  a social status symbol:  only one line for poor people, four and more for the rich ones.