Month: January 2017
Leaked Schumacher email reveals friction within Zaha Hadid Architects
In a leaked email, Patrik Schumacher claims that an open letter sent out by Zaha Hadid Architects in the aftermath of his controversial World Architecture Festival speech should never have been issued. Read more
Record traffic to Dezeen in 2016 with almost 50 million visits
Dezeen had its best-ever year in terms of visitors in 2016, with unique visitors up nearly 11 per cent to over 20 million and visits up 8.5 per cent to almost 50 million. Read more
Competition: win a BeoSound 1 wireless speaker system by Bang & Olufsen
Dezeen has teamed up with electronics brand Bang & Olufsen to give away one of its new cone-shaped Beosound 1 wireless speaker systems. Read more
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17 Templates for Common Construction Systems to Help you Materialize Your Projects
Earlier this year, Chilean architects and professors Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia from the Federico Santa María University released a book (in Spanish) titled “Sistemas Constructivos Básicos” (Basic Construction Systems).” The book aims to be a tool to help architects translate their plan diagrams into tangible architectural works, as well as to help students learn the knowledge necessary to build what they plan.
The main teaching objective here is for students to gain sufficient knowledge to allow them to select a suitable and coherent construction system for each of their projects. At the same time, the students can use this to draw generic templates, to describe with precision the position and construction sequence of the building elements to be used.
Below are 17 diagrams from the book showing templates for basic building systems using handcrafted processes, which are ideal solutions for low-rise buildings (up to four floors). The details collected here depict local Chilean construction, and thus show designs which respond to challenges such as seismic activity and the topographic complexity of the coast of Chile. Though currently only available in Spanish, ArchDaily hopes to work with the authors to provide English translations in the future. In the meantime, these templates may still be an important reference document for architects all over the world.
1. Generic section for a 1-story building (from the chapter on Layout and Excavations).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
2. Retaining wall for living space (from the chapter on Foundations).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
3. Improved quincha wall (from the chapter on Raw Earth).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
4. Balloon frame wall filled with adobe brick (from the chapter on Raw Earth).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
5. Post-tensioned rammed-earth wall (from the chapter on Raw Earth).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
6. Adobe wall (from the chapter on Raw Earth).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
7. Steel-reinforced masonry wall (from the chapter on Masonry).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
8. Concrete frame wall with brick infill (from the chapter on Masonry).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
4. Balloon frame wall filled with adobe brick (from the chapter on Wood).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
10. Timber shear wall (from the chapter on Wood).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
11. Mixed wood and steel wall system (from the chapter on Steel).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
12. Metalcon ® / Volcometal ® wall system (from the chapter on Steel).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
13. Covintec ® wall system (from the chapter on Mixed Construction Systems).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
14. Structural insulated panel (SIP) wall (from the chapter on Mixed Construction Systems).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
15. 3-layer wall system, part 1 (from the chapter on Horizontal Platforms).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
16. 3-layer wall system, part 2 (from the chapter on Horizontal Platforms).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
17. Window section (from the chapter on Doors and Windows).
Courtesy of Luis Pablo Barros and Gustavo Sarabia
New York City – New York – USA (by August Brill)
New York City – New York – USA (by August Brill)
💙 Summer’s Shower on 500px by Phil Koch, Milwaukee,…
💙 Summer’s Shower on 500px by Phil Koch, Milwaukee, USA☀ Canon… http://ift.tt/2aZMjvy
Top 10 Tips to Help Children Develop Useful Habits
Being a good parent means helping your kids acquire healthy habits and helping them drop the bad ones. It doesn’t matter whether your child is a toddler or a teenager, there is always time for you to help and motivate your children to be better people by aiding them and setting an example.
However, with the sheer amount of pressure every parent experiences when trying to raise children, they might often feel helpless and desperate. Parents might not know what healthy habits are of the biggest priority for children and where the best place to start is.
This might be a bit overwhelming considering that the problems your children need help with vary greatly, from providing help with term paper writing to picking sports to practice. To help you along, we have created a list of things you definitely should teach your child regardless of their age.
Eat healthy food
This might be one of the most simple habits your child should be introduced to. By feeding them healthy products, you will increase their energy and promote better well-being.
However, as children tend to like unhealthy foods more, introducing them to this habit might not be the easiest task. So, make sure to be a good example for them because no matter what you teach them, if they see you eating pizza for dinner while they have to eat broccoli, it will only make them angry.
Some households are successful in getting their children to eat healthy by not introducing junk foods into their diet at all and letting children understand the benefits of healthy eating.
Also, it might be easier if you make eating healthy into a fun activity. An example would be creating pictures out of food. Check out bento boxes for inspiration.
See Also: Four Simple Ways to Teach Your Kids to Say “NO” to Junk Foods
Say no to gadgets
If you can’t keep your children from using their gadgets, at least limit the time and duration that they are used. For instance, you can ask them to spend up to twenty minutes a day watching their favorite cartoons.
On top of that, you can use this time as a reward for helping family members or for doing the homework. This way, you are hitting two birds with one stone.
Also, make sure you are a good example for them here as well. If you cannot spend even a few moments without your cell phone, your kids will surely pick up the same habits.
Quality family time
Spending quality family time is an investment for your children. Not only are you creating many happy memories for your children, you are also teaching them how precious the family is.
So, consider planning family trips or celebrating certain holidays only in the family circle and involve your children in making preparations.
Playing sports
Taking care of your health is vital. However, not all parents can be considered as role models for their kids in this area. Some parents are too stressed at work while some run away from exercise.
Show your children that taking care of one’s health is a priority. Get involved in some kind of sport with your kids and inculcate it as a habit.
Life values
It is from parents that we learn our values first. They teach us responsibility, accountability, and selflessness.
Therefore, if you want your child to grow up to be mature and grown-up, be the kind of person you want them to be. You are the first and the most important role model for them.
Being positive
Don’t be a negative person. Try to cheer your children up even when things are not going as well as you would want them to. You can always find a bright side and encourage your whole family.
By choosing a positive path, you will improve your children’s future. In comparison, being a negative person will definitely affect their own personalities and well-being.
Realistic goals
People often get frustrated after they fail to achieve goals they set. They feel like a failure, even though they are not.
Sometimes, failing is a byproduct of setting unrealistic goals. Therefore, to keep your children happy and going, teach them to set realistic goals and then to go on from there.
Teach them to break up their ambitions into doable tasks and challenges, all the while working towards their bigger dreams.
Saying “no”
Many people regret not having this habit. We cannot say “no” even when we know that we cannot fulfill what people ask us for. We tend to try and please everyone, and we mostly pick it up after our parents who either used to be like this or set huge expectations we could not meet. Thus, teach your children to say “no”, and they will be forever grateful to you.
Being a good friend
This habit is a key to a successful life. We never feel like a failure when we have friends who can help us get through life’s darkest moments. Therefore, teaching your children how to make genuine friends and what it means to be a good friend themselves is truly a blessing. First, be a good friend to your kids, and then encourage them making friends with kids of their age.
Honesty
And finally, we come to honesty. Teach your children how to be true to themselves, their friends, and to you. Help them understand that lying or pretending never works as a lie is always found out in the end. To be happy and satisfied, they have to be real and true to what they believe in.
If parents teach their children these simple yet powerful habits, parents will see a real miracle of how a small helpless child grows to be a healthy young person of great value.
See Also: 11 Ways Parents Can Help Children Do Better In School
The post Top 10 Tips to Help Children Develop Useful Habits appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
“Hardcore Heritage”: How RAAAF is Redefining Historical Preservation
Rendering of Deltawerk 1:1. Image Courtesy of RAAAF | Atelier de Lyon
This article was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as “‘Hardcore Heritage’: RAAAF Reveals Its Latest Experiment in Historical Preservation.”
In the practice of historic preservation, there is often a temptation to turn a building into an object on display—meticulously restored, unchanging, physically isolated—in order to remove it from the flow of history. The multidisciplinary Amsterdam-based studio Rietveld-Architecture-Art-Affordances (RAAAF) situates itself in opposition to this method of dealing with architectural remnants. Instead, it proposes to make history tangible by altering these decaying structures in a way that makes their stories plainly visible. The practice has a name for this approach—”hardcore heritage.”
Founded and led by brothers Ronald and Erik Rietveld, RAAAF has completed several projects that together form a kind of built manifesto for hardcore heritage, with the next iteration due out in 2018. The procedure changes with each project—there are excavations, but also deletions—but in every case, the end result charges them with a new special significance. In Ronald’s words, the works are “about the spatial experience that triggers imagination.”
The first stirrings came in Vacant NL, the studio’s installation for the Dutch pavilion at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, which cataloged thousands of vacant properties in the Netherlands. The Rietvelds see these dormant structures as resources to be awakened and reused—and their most famous project shows how it can be done.
Bunker 599, which cut a 19th-century concrete pillbox in half, sheds new light on Dutch and UNESCO policies on cultural heritage while making people look at their surroundings in a new way. Image © Allard Bovenberg
Bunker 599, designed with Atelier de Lyon, made the team aware of the vast challenges in preserving structures so they can be truly reused, not just conserved as museum pieces or recycled as anchors for retail. The project entailed reviving a concrete bunker by cutting it in half, transforming it from an inert solid sitting in the landscape to something that could be walked through and interacted with. But experimental approaches like these can often be difficult to mount, Ronald says, because local authorities are wary of diverting public funds to them: “There is a lack of vision on this topic; policies concerning heritage are far too conservative.”
After Image shows the world below the Netherlands’ terrain, constructed on millions of pillars. RAAAF’s intervention reveals part of the exciting underworld of a former sugar silo, where uncovering the foundation of just one silo exposes an enormous concrete cathedral below ground. Image Courtesy of RAAAF
Named a Dutch national monument two years after it opened in 2010, Bunker 599 has thankfully opened up the door to other hardcore heritage undertakings. For instance, After Image, an excavated “forest” of concrete foundation piers that stand beneath a demolished sugar factory in Groningen, is set to open in 2018.
Rendering of Deltawerk 1:1. Image Courtesy of RAAAF | Atelier de Lyon
And if the renderings are anything to go by, RAAF’s latest will bring their plays in mass and scale to an altogether more powerful level. Deltawerk 1:1 adapts another Dutch national monument, a portion of the former Dutch hydrodynamics laboratory at Waterloopbos, which once tested one-to-one scale models of engineered water defenses. Now sitting empty, RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon propose excavating the 820-foot-long concrete structure to fully reveal its enormous volume.
Rendering of Deltawerk 1:1. Image Courtesy of RAAAF | Atelier de Lyon
The final stage of the project will involve cutting panels from the tank’s walls and turning them 90 degrees. Their huge size and precarious positions recall images of seemingly robust and monumental objects tossed around by wind, storms, floods, or waves. As the seasons change, daylight will spotlight different facets of the structure, even as its original use becomes more and more forgotten. Ronald hopes that it will “open up ways of interpreting history toward the future, rather than just telling stories from the past.”
The designers are looking into how their unique take on preservation can be adopted beyond the Netherlands, where they would have greater opportunities to generate the new from the old, rather than simply halting decay. That is the urgent next step, Ronald says. “Preservation by itself doesn’t bring us further into the future. We need radical new perspectives.”
RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon Reveal a Monumental Tribute to the Dutch Delta Works in Waterloopbos
See more of the Deltawerk 1:1 project here.
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Sig Nordal 