It was only meant to be.

I think my blog is a rather accurate indication of just how busy my life gets. Amidst my unbelievably hectic working schedule, I’m here blogging because when I say I’m back, I really mean I’m back. But to be fair, I just nailed the Shell’s renovation project and “Bintulu Waterfront shoplots” project – YAWN, so I think it’s safe for me to murmur a very soft sigh of relieve that it’s finally over. There, I just said the ill-fated word. It’s not like I haven’t learnt the fact that it’s never over, I might as well just chill while I can. Though, I know I’m about to piss people off. There’s still so much work ahead of me. By the way, I’m really trying to hard sell myself these days, because I’m thinking about taking a leap of faith. Ahem. I don’t anything know yet, but I just might. I think it’s probably about time.

* * * * * *

I think the shop-lots are just plain dumb and people are getting clever with the names these days – “Open malls”, “Outdoor Mall” , “Shopping Village”. How fucking lame is that. The thing is no matter how interesting people try to name these shop-lots, it’s not going to make the concept any more exciting than it already is. The problem I have with these shop-lots is that the planning itself is a waste of space. It creates too much useless in-between spaces that will inevitably turn into smelly back alleys in the long run and finally when the whole place eventually runs down it creates another slum block in the city. If anything, it just doesn’t provide an otherwise appealing shopping environment at all. “Shopping Village” apparently. Are you fucking kidding me?

I was on my routine surfing today and I came across a rather interesting piece of article - 17 Jobs That Are Guaranteed to Get You Laid . Apparently - Architects are on the top of the list. Now I really don’t know what to make of it, but I do love the idea that architects are sexy beings. Take that, other jobs chronic masturbators!

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I was given two fish tanks couple of weeks ago, and it’s still lying around the car porch. I’m yet to clean it – and it’s so dirty it’s shameful. Then I will have to fill it with water and start all over the new-tank-cycle process before I can put any fish in. Longer story short – it’s a long process, and I have no time for it. - It sucks.

I was thinking of just leaving the tank outside, so I don’t have to move anything inside the house just to accommodate the new tank. Too much work. Mom said if I were to place the tank on that particular spot I picked, I’d have to paint the wall first; otherwise, I’d have to move the tank again if we decided to paint it just right before Chinese New Year, which would suck even more because people get cranky during spring cleaning. And I’m not about to move the fucking tank anywhere once it’s up and running because moving a 4 feet tank takes some real muscles and I ain’t got that. So really, the only viable option I can think of is really just leave the tank outside at the car porch and move my fish there. The good thing about this is that I won’t have to worry about the fish splashing water all over the place when she throws a tantrum every now and then. But again, since I don’t live in a posh neighborhood, people here have the tendency to steal things – pets included so it’s not entirely that safe to have the tank outside. I can’t decide.

By the way, I’ve committed a sin so big - I could never look myself in the mirror again, I’m ashamed of myself. Yesterday after dinner, mom told me there are cakes in the fridge and asked if I wanted any. So I asked what kind of cake. And she went on and dropped the shameful bomb at me – that her girlfriends at work bought her those delicious cakes because it was her birthday the day before.

and I was like SHIT !!!

I guess there’s no point I bitch and moan about how sorry I am right now. I’ll make it up to her, and when I say I will, damn right I will.

In the mean time – I’m off to get laid.

The architect’s style.

Damn right I am.

Holy shit. Some one cracked Tate Modern & 2007 Sterling Prize

Artist Doris Salcedo just cracked Tate Modern's Turbine Hall's concrete floor, No, really, Shut Up!

This installation by the Colombian artist is called 'Shibboleth' - a fissure that starts as a hairline crack at the top of the ramp near the west entrance of the hall and zigzags 167 metres down to the far end, gradually widening and deepening as it runs, creating smaller and more superficial cracks along the way.

Shibboleth - which comes from the bible, refers to a word that only those your own tribe could pronounce - to proof that you belong. A shibboleth is a test of authenticity, a means to separate friend from foe. The artist used this as the metaphor for racism. Salcedo has said that the crack and the wire mesh refer to the evil of racism, the divide between the black and white halves of humanity that, in time, only gets deeper and wider and will, at the end, bring the whole building down.



Said Salcedo: "It represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred. It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe. For example, the space which illegal immigrants occupy is a negative space. And so this piece is a negative space."

The museum and artist are choosing to let the process of its creation remain a mystery, yet the exhibit will be closed next year when the crack will be filled in: "There is a crack, there is a line, and eventually there will be a scar and that scar will remain. It will remain as a memory of the work and also as a memorial to the issues Doris touches on."

Holy shit, I could only imagine what it's like to really be there and look at it. I suppose it must be visually stunning.

'Shibboleth' will be on display until 6th April 2008. I need to start saving up.

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2007 Sterling Prize Winner



David Chipperfield won 2007's Sterling Prize for his design for Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar, Germany

The official RIBA citation of this award-winning design.

Museum of Modern Literature
Marbach am Neckar, Germany

Architect: David Chipperfield Architects
Client: Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
Site supervision: Wenzel + Wenzel
Project management: Drees + Sommer
Structural engineer: Ingenieurgruppe Bauen
Services engineer: Jaeger, Mornhinweg + Partner
Ingenieurgesellschaft / Ingenieurbüro Burrer +
Deuring
Contract Value: 11.8m euro
Date of completion: June 2006
Gross internal area: 3,800 sq m

Following re-unification, texts of various well-known German authors which had previously been dispersed to east and west have now been brought together in this new museum. In a suitably commemorative manner the building forms a small Acropolis attached to the National Schiller Museum on a ridge overlooking the valley of the River Neckar. The entrance sequence is brilliant. The visitor crosses an open terrace overlooking the valley, then negotiates a series of shallow steps to enter the generous portal formed in the colonnade, then enters through giant hardwood doors. A staircase descends to the collections with their required diminishing lighting levels. It is at this moment of descent that the building shows its pedigree – a sense of a progression to somewhere beyond, combined with a rich but selective palette of materials and illuminated with subdued top lighting. The route concludes in the permanent collection. Here glass cases containing original manuscripts form a magical flickering landscape. There is a particular theatricality about this space, as though the reflections, refractions and multiple shadows from the small intense lights collectively represent the soul of the German imagination.

There are many things to praise about this building – the architect’s control and discrimination in the choice of materials has by now become a signature but above all it is in the handling of the ‘difficult whole’ that the building excels. The external pre-cast concrete arcading (or is it a screen or even a cage?) forming the entrance pavilion is also applied to the plinth on the east side. This unexpectedly produces a monumental elevation cut into the hillside, which simultaneously democratises the acropolis giving equal status to pavilion and plinth. The same measure and interval of the vertical structure is then to be found forming the soffit to the beams to the galleries inside…. Truly a tour de force.

Since the end of the war Germany has been sensitive to matters concerning the neo-classical in architecture. Had it been submitted a decade or two earlier it would surely have been eliminated for its formal manner. It is encouraging that with time, more even-handed attitudes have prevailed.

Wow, Your Maid's Bathroom Is Bigger Than My House.

This is a pretty old news, probably 2 or 3 months back, but I decided to post it anyway.

If you look up Wikipedia's entry on India capital, Mumbai's demographic, it's something like this:

"Like other metropolises in the developing world, Mumbai suffers from the same major urbanization problems seen in many fast growing cities in developing countries — widespread poverty and unemployment, poor public health, civic and educational standards for a large section of the population. With available space at a premium, Mumbai residents often reside in cramped, relatively expensive housing, usually far from workplaces, and therefore requiring long commutes on crowded mass transit, or clogged roadways. According to 2001 census of India, more than half of the city's population lives in slums, that is about 54% of the population lives in shantytowns and slums."

And this, the super-fugly 1 billion, 27-storey skyscraper you are looking at is not some new apartment development that is about to rise over the skyline of Mumbai, but a house, yes this is a house, or home, or whatever you want to call it of filthy rich Indian dog named Mukesh Ambani, apparently he is the richest man in India, like eww.

According to the BBC website:

His skyscraper home in the city will be over 170m tall and will have an army of 600 staff to manage it. Its 27 floors on a 4,532 sq metre plot will provide a panoramic view of the entire city of Mumbai (Bombay) once it is completed next year.

The first six floors will serve as car parks. A health club will be built on the next two and the few floors above that will house hundreds of staff.

Fifty-year-old Mr Ambani and his family will occupy the top floors of the building which will also have a (correction: there were 3 proposed) helipad and swimming pools.

Critics say it is an obscene display of wealth, especially in a city where more than half the inhabitants live on the pavements.

Architects believe that the construction of high-rises will provide a long-term solution to the problem of sheltering the city's homeless, especially when development land is in short supply.

One architect who is constructing a building which will be even taller than that planned by Mr Ambani told the BBC that Mumbai will soon be "littered with high-rises" as the government strives to shift slum dwellers into tower blocks."

As cheesy as this might sound, I have always treated architecture as a solution to a problem, any problem that one perceived, like the word concept we love to use so much. Concept is like, a proposal, stating the problem; where it could be the site, the society, or even at bigger scale, the city or country, and designing, developing the concept is like a process of finding a solution, hence the architecture - how is the proposed architecture is going to make a difference to a site. Sure, when architects say construction of high rise could actually provide long term solution to shelter the homeless - if the high-rise is actually providing shelter to hundreds of family, not just one family.

And the firm that design this, is ironically the quite respectable firm Perkin + Will. It's ironic that this piece of crap is coming from this firm, when on their official website, they stated that their main design philosophy is, and I quote "ideas + buildings that honor the broader goals of society." Since more than 50% of Mumbai's population live in poverty and dwell in slumps, I cannot help but wonder how this building could "honor the broader goals of society" when all that people on the street is going to see is this big fucking chunk of Uno Stacko telling them just how miserable, how poor they are.

It's also very interesting to learn that Perkin + Will's company visions is that "Sustainability plays an essential role in everything we do. It's our personal commitment to creating solutions that contribute to human well-being and enhance the long-term health of our planet." Sure, the awful rendering shows they considered planting jungles on some intermediate floors, sure there are some nice tress hanging off the balcony and some nice watery features that made the building look so green, so environmental friendly. But sustainability does not only rely on plating jungles on your balcony, and having a pool won't help with the global warming, puh-lease. From my understanding that is, most things you would find in eco-friendly buildings like solar panel or maybe rain water collection is NOT part of the design. Eco-friendly? You've got to be kidding me.

So, all I am saying is that it proved my point that, most (but not all) rich people, they have a way of making poorer people look up at them, whether they are really just too ingorant to realize or, maybe they deliberately want to flaunt their richness in everybody's face, I really have no idea. And, please, I am not even categorizing people. This is daft.

New material.

Some new material I did for work, proposal for a redevelopment of a cultural center.

WTC: Final Designs Revealed

The developer of the new WTC site revealed the final designs on 7th September, just few days before 9-11 anniversary.Unveiled are the towers:Tower 2 (Norman Foster), Tower 3 (Richard Rogers) & Tower 4 (Fumihiko Maki)- that will stand along Freedom Tower (Tower 1) by Skidmore, Owings & Merril.

* * * * * TOWER 2 * * * * *

Architect: Norman Foster

Design Concept: 78 stories (62 for offices, 4 for trading, the rest for retail & mechanical space. 1265 ft. high, slightly taller than Empire State Building). The uppermost of the rooftop diamonds will be a tripod shaped antenna whose pinnacle is 1,350 feet above street level.





The main shaft of Tower 2 is to be divided by notches into quadrants, culminating in diamond forms that are meant to lead the eye down to the memorial plaza. The surface of these structures will be a porous screen on which snow and ice are not expected to accumulate.

* * * * * TOWER 3 * * * * *

Architect: Richard Rogers
Design Concept: 1155 ft tall. 71 stories (54 for offices, 5 for trading, 3 for retail, 9 for machanical). Flat topped building with asymmetrical shoulders and exposed diagonal framework.

* * * * * TOWER 4 * * * * *

Architect: Fumihiko Maki
Design Concept: 61 stories, rises for most of its height as a parallelogram and then, nearly 700 feet in the sky, it becomes a trapezoid, reaching an overall height of 946 feet, with no antennas. The upper part of the facade inclines toward the towers to the north and is meant as a unifying gesture.

War and Architecture > Rat I Arhitektura

Architecture and war are not incompatible.
Architecture is war. War is architecture.
I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority
that resides in fixed and frightened forms.
I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family,
no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end,
no "sacred and primordial site."
I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories
that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears.
I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments,
and forms that appear with infinite strength, then "melt into air."
I am an architect, a constructor of worlds,
a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody,
a silhoutte against the darkening sky.
I cannot know your name. Nor you can know mine.
Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.

by,
Lebbeus Woods, 1993

Extracted from War and Architecture [RAT I ARHITEKTURA]
>Pamphlet Architecture 15
>Princeton Architectural Press.